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LANDING AT THE ISLAND 




HERMIT ISLAND 


BY 

KATHERINE LEE BATES 

Author of thf. $1000 Prize Story “ Rose and Thorn,” the 
Prize Poem “ Sunshine,” and others • 

Editor of the “Wedding Day Book” 


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'boston 

D LOTHROP COMPANY 


WASHINGTON STREET OPPOSITE BROMFIELD 



Copyright, 1890, 

BY 

D. Lothrop Company. 


Pressvvork by Berwick & Smith, Boston. 


Conquer we shall, but we must first contend ; 

’Tis not the fight that crowns us, but the end. 

— Robert Herrick, 




CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

I. The Moonlight Path 7 

II. The Islanders 29 

III. School 51 

IV. Fortune-telling 78 

V. The Hermit 103 

VI. The Arrival 123 

VII. Which? 15 1 

VIII. Fatherhood 169 

IX. In the Moonlight 189 

X. Del 208 

XI. Dolo 229 

XII. Powers of Darkness 250 

XIII. The Midnight Altar 269 

XIV. Taken at Her Word 287 

XV. Grace of Pardon 307 

XVI. Moonlight Once More 328 



HERMIT ISLAND. 


CHAPTER I. 

THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


When first the moon frae the saut sea peeped, 

She kythed like maiden’s gouden kerpb, 

And the sleepy waves washed o’er her brow, 

And bell’d her cheek with the briny faem. 

But the yellow leme spread up the lift. 

And the stars grew dim before her e’e. 

And up arose the Queen of Night 
In all her solemn majesty. 

— James Hogg. 

I T was a tranquil summer evening, and the 
long waves of the Atlantic broke gently, 
even caressingly, on the sandy shores of Hermit 
Island. The moon, almost at the full, slowly 
climbed the sky, which still flushed with the 
last faint colors of sunset. Over the broad ex- 
panse of water drooped large drifts of cloud, soft 
and tender-colored, their delicate lines of pink and 


8 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


rose reflected in broken lights from the restless 
surface of the ocean. Occasionally an idle flash 
of lightning, leaping from a dark-blue belt of 
gloom far off to the eastward, quivered across the 
waves. North of the island could be dimly dis- 
cerned the low, curving line of the Maine coast, 
the red gleam of a revolving light flashing every 
alternate minute into view. A few film-like sails 
glimmered on the horizon, and between the island 
and the mainland a dory was in sight, but so far 
away that it seemed to lie motionless on the 
water. Every now and then a seal bobbed up his 
brown head to take the air. The tide was coming 
in, and each successive wave, rearing itself erect 
for one brief instant, displayed a green wall glint- 
ing with diamond radiance, suddenly toppling and 
falling with a musical splash in a cascade of curl- 
ing, crisping, white-glistening foam. 

At the eastern point of the island, watching the 
play of the surf, stood a solitary figure, a man, 
evidently a gentleman, dressed in rusty black. 
His head, the thick brown hair besprinkled with 
gray, was bare. His shoulders were rounded, one 
leg was thrown slightly forward, resting against 
the keel of a discarded dory, and his hands were 
clasped behind him. 

‘*A wasted life!” he murmured to himself; ‘<a 
wasted life I Is mine a wasted life ? Who has a 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


9 


right to call it so } What is waste, and what is 
failure ? The waves break on the beach, one 
after another, one after another, one after an- 
other, and for some there is glory of daylight, 
and for some beauty of moonlight, and for 
some dimness of fog and mist or blackness of 
clouded midnight. Yet even the darkest share in 
the great tide-movements, leap and fall and are 
lost to view, and others press after. * Shall the 
sunlit wave condemn the wave of the shadow.? 
The wave-life is not in *the sparkk that flashes 
from it, nor in the nature of the shore it washes 
— populous strand or undiscovere'd wild, but in 
obedience to the tidal law. A wasted life ! The 
friends of my youth shake their heads, when they 
talk of me. My place in the world has long 
closed over. A wasted life ! Ah, God, is it you 
who call it so ” 

The speaker was roused from his reverie by 
the ring of a clear young voice crying joyfully, 
“ Oh, Uncle Maurice ! Uncle Maurice ! ” 

Turning with a start and looking back, Maurice 
Yorke waved his hand cheerfully to two slight 
girlish figures that were scrambling down the 
sandy bluff to join him. Above could be seen 
sparse knots of grasses and coarse green weeds, 
dotted with yellow patches of wild mustard. 
Between the foot of the bluff and the water lay 


10 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


a narrow strip of dry, soft-sanded beach, in which 
even the light steps of the girls made deep 
footprints. 

Of what station in life these island maidens 
might be, it was at first sight hard to surmise. 
There was nothing rustic in their features, but 
nothing conventional in their dress ; they were 
brown and agile as young gypsies, and a subtle 
likeness, even in the face of marked and obvious 
unlikeness, suggested that they were sisters. For 
age, they might have been in their early teens, 
but it was difficult to determine which was the 
elder. The one in advance was noticeable for a 
wealth of wavy auburn hair, which floated back 
upon the light sea-wind as she ran, and for a 
singularly rosy, laugh-loving, kiss-inviting little 
mouth. Her companion was smaller, darker, less 
attractive, with peculiarly black eyebrows, from 
beneath which the black eyes looked out strangely 
enough, suspiciously, defiantly, and yet with a 
certain hunger in their gaze. The foremost sped 
as fast as the clinging sands would permit to the 
benignant-faced, dreamy-eyed loiterer whom she 
had hailed as Uncle Maurice, clasping one of his 
extended hands in both her own and drawing- 

O 

him down with her into a sitting posture upon the 
beach. The other stood aloof, biting the end of 
her long black braid and watching, now the roll- 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. I I 

ing waters and now the mounting moon, which 
had diffused about itself a misty yellow halo. 

“Come and sit down with us, Dolo,” called 
Uncle Maurice, kindly. “Del and I will feel lazy, 
if you persist in standing.” 

“Yes, do, Dolo, and we’ll play we’re King 
Canute. Keep your distance, old ocean. Don’t 
you dare cross this mark,” cried Del, gaily, groov- 
ing a line in the sand with the heel of her bare 
brown foot, for both girls were guiltless of shoes 
and stockings. 

“I’m not King Anybody — I’m myself,” replied 
Dolo, speaking with a curious abruptness, each 
short, swift sentence breathless at the end. 

“Oh, come, Dolo; come, and I’ll give you my 
evening primroses to wear,” teased Del, snatching 
a posy of the yellow blossoms from the sash of 
frayed and faded satin ribbon, once pink, tied 
incongruously enough about the waist of her flan- 
nel frock, coarse in texture, gray in color and 
severely plain in make. Her sister wore a dress 
precisely similar, but relieved by neither sash nor 
flowers. 

Dolo wrinkled her nose disdainfully. 

“You may keep your old primroses,” she said; 
“I don’t wear wilted flowers.” 

“But these ar’n’t wilted,” protested Del. 

Dolo shrugged her shoulder. 


12 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Does the flower-soul die when the flower is 
picked, Uncle Maurice ? ” asked Del, tickling her 
friend’s cheek with the nosegay to wake him from 
his dream. 

“God forbid!” murmured Uncle Maurice, with- 
out turning his tranquil gaze from the sea, which 
was already touched with gold by the beams of 
the rising moon. 

“Sure enough!” exclaimed Del, catching up 
his suggestion with the lightness peculiar to her 
nature ; “ ’twas only the primrose bodies that died 
when I picked them, and now their souls shall go 
to heaven,” and aiming at the golden reflection, 
Del flung the flowers upon the tide, which pres- 
ently washed them up again at Dole’s feet. Dolo 
surveyed them in silence for a moment, then 
stooped suddenly and caught them back from the 
reach of the following wave. Something in the 
look of the wet, rejected blossoms seemed to 
soften her mood, for she carried them toward the 
bluff and laid them down, with a tender, consoling 
stroke, in one of the patches of wild mustard. 

“That’s not heaven-gold. That’s only earth- 
gold,” called Del’s blithesome tones. 

Dolo shrugged her shoulder, this time almost 
angrily. “Don’t talk nonsense. They’re noth- 
ing but flowers,” she said, in her short, curt 
fashion. 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


3 


“That’s just like Dolo,” pouted Del. “She 
never will play anything, Uncle Maurice. We 
were over at the pine-tree this afternoon, and I 
wanted her to make believe it was a forest, and I 
was Sleeping Beauty, and she was the Prince 
who scratched his hands for seven days pushing 
through the thickets, to find me there at last ; but 
Dolo said it wasn’t a forest ; it was only an ugly 
little scrub-pine.” 

Uncle Maurice smiled involuntarily, as there 
arose before his mental vision the forlorn image 
of the one tree on the island — graceless, stunted, 
the bare trunk diverging half way up into two 
gaunt branches, also bare, save^ for the green 
tuft of needles crowning each. It was a pine in 
which the smallest and meanest of all the crows 
would have disdained to build a nest. No won- 
der that Dolo found it too great a strain upon her 
imagination to transform it into a forest. 

“But what’s the good of having a tree on the 
island,” asked Del, “if you can’t make believe it’s 
a forest or a castle or a tower, or whatever you 
want ? Dolo might as well have a yardstick. 
She can’t do anything with the tree.” 

“ I can climb it,” said Dolo, shortly. 

“What’s the good of climbing it,” persisted 
Del, “ unless you make believe it’s the mast of a 
wrecked ship and you’re looking out for rescue. 


14 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


or a lighthouse and you must trim the lamps, or 
something else.? What’s the good of climbing 
it.?” 

“To show I can,” retorted Dolo, flinging a 
scornful glance of the black eyes over her shoul- 
der. “You can’t. You always slip back.” 

“Tut, tut!” said Uncle Maurice, gently, pull- 
ing a soft felt hat from one of his pockets and 
drawing it down significantly over his ears. 

Del laughed and sifted a handful of sand into 
the hat-rim, saying lightly — 

“You don’t love to hear us quarrel, do you. 
Uncle Maurice.? I’m sorry, for we shall have to 
do it, all the same. We never agreed yet on any- 
thing in this world, except being fond of you. 
But we agree on that, don’t we, Dolo .? ” 

Uncle Maurice, his wistful, irresolute mouth 
breaking into a smile, drew Del closer to his side 
and held out his disengaged hand to Dolo. But 
Dolo, unresponsive, bit the crispy end of her 
black braid in silence. Del continued to chatter. 

“I remember the first present you ever gave 
us. It was when we were little girls, just after 
father had brought us to the island, and every- 
thing seemed so strange and lonesome. It was 
a board of marbles — a solitaire you called it — 
something you had found in the notion shop over 
on the coast. There was a way to jump the mar- 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


15 


bles off. so as to leave just one in the middle. 
Dolo worked and worked till she could do it, and 
then she never played with the board again. But 
I used to spend hours at a time talking with the 
marbles, and I know them all to-day as well as I 
know the people on the island.” 

‘‘Tell me about them,” coaxed Uncle Maurice, 
stroking the wavy hair ; “ I want to enlarge my 
circle of acquaintance.” 

“There are six families of them,” explained 
Del, lowering her voice confidentially — “the royal 
family, the wise family, the warlike family, the 
comrnonplace family, the sinful-holy family and 
the poetic family. The father of the royal fam- 
ily is king of all the marbles. He’s the most 
beautiful amber, with sparkling gold spots in him. 
And his sons are all striped in different colors, 
like rainbows. The eldest, the crown prince, is 
big and splendid. His' colors are the richest. 
The next is quiet-colored — sober and thoughtful 
in disposition. The next is my particular anxiety. 
His colors are too bold and they don’t blend well. 
He’s inclined to be wild and is always heading 
insurrections. The youngest is a promising boy 
— bright-colored, with white stripes here and 
there. The crown prince is especially proud and 
fond of him. The fathers of all the other families 
sit in council with the king, but the father of the 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


I6 


wise family is prime minister. You would like 
him ever so much. He is such a kind, pleasant 
blue, and all the other blue marbles are his sons. 
Most of them are good. The oldest is a lovely 
character — all heaven-colored. The next oldest 
is a. dark blue, with flashes in him. We think 

that he is capable of great things, if he isn’t led 

astray by pride and ambition. The wild prince 

has a bad influence over him, but Heaven-Blue 

is his good angel. It’s delightful to see brothers 
so devoted to each other. But the third son has 
a vicious, yellow-brown spot in him, which makes 
him incline to all sorts of badness. He giv^s his 
poor father no end of trouble. The others are 
nothing remarkable — just fine, high-spirited boys, 
all except the youngest, who is an unhappy little 
invalid, rough and scarred all over. His big 
brothers are very patient with him. The warlike 
family is the largest. They are all green. The 
father is — oh, so brilliant! — a dazzling hero! 
He always leads the battle charges, shouting, 
‘For King and Honor!’ But his eldest sons are 
big, stupid bullies, dull and blotchy, and his next 
to the youngest — such a horrid color! — is just 
depraved. There are only three that are respected 
by the other marbles, and one of those is more 
liked than respected. He is light green, with a 
curly gray band. He is lazy, but good-natured. 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


7 


But one is brave and noble, and the smallest one 
is plucky, though not noble. You would see the 
difference in a minute, if I had them here. There 
are only four in the commonplace family — all 
brown. The father is the best. His color is 
soft and deep. But the twins are just hard- 
headed, uninteresting boys. The little one has 
a flash of yellow in him, though, and is sometimes 
really quite witty. The sinful-holy family is the 
family I’m sorrowfulest about. It ought to be 
white, but the father is a cloudy old ruffian, with 
a horrible red streak right through his heart, and 
the eldest son takes after him. The next son is 
my comfort. He is the saintliest of all my mar- 
bles and the most intimate friend of Heaven- 
Blue. He has an excellent influence over his 
two younger brothers. One of them is sweet- 
tempered and honorable, but not very — what is 
it you call it. Uncle Maurice, spiritual f — and the 
white of the other is part clear and part dim, so 
he’s always wavering between good and evil. 
The poetic family are transparent, with little 
bright flowers inside. They are all unworldly, 
but I think only one of them is a genius. He 
has stars inside, not flowers. Oh, I wish I had 
my marbles here, and then you would understand 
better. Though I am such a big girl. Uncle 
Maurice, I like to play with my families yet. 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


I8 

You don’t know what exciting times we all have, 
with wars and plots and rebellions and things.” 

Dolo gave her impatient shrug of the left shoul- 
der. Uncle Maurice laughed a low, indulgent, 
lingering laugh, pleasant to hear. 

“But you haven’t any mothers or any daughters 
in your families,” he said. 

“Why, no,” responded Del, in a surprised tone; 
“of course not. How funny! It wouldn’t be — 
it wouldn’t be appropriate with marbles. Besides, 
there ar’n’t any. Don’t you see.? I can’t make 
the marbles what I choose. They are what they 
are, and I see it ; that’s all. But there are plenty 
of mothers and daughters, brides and sweethearts, 
too, among my shells. The little, white, slender 
lady-shells go out driving with the big, bright- 
colored hero-shells in the dearest shell-carriages 
you ever saw. The next time you come over to 
our house. I’ll show you my shells, and tell you 
all about them. When I was small and could 
play v/ith them all I liked, without being laughed 
at, there used to be a wedding, or a duel, or an 
elopement, or a funeral, every single day. But 
see! the boys are almost in.” 

“I could have told you that long ago,” said 
Dolo. For while they had been chatting, sturdy 
strokes had brought the dory nearer and nearer, 
until now it had reached the edge of the surf. It 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


19 


was never an easy matter to bring a boat in safely 
over the breakers, and the little group on the 
beach became silent, watching with interest, but 
without anxiety, the maneuvers of the young oars- 
men. Robert Yorke and his brothers were expert 
boatmen, but in spite of their skill and caution, a 
great foaming wave, following too closely in the 
rear of one they had just surmounted, broke over 
the stern of the dory and drenched the nearest 
boy, Nathan, from head to foot. A shout of 
laughter broke from Robert and Eric, with which 
Del’s silvery treble gaily blended, and even Na- 
than’s father smiled at the disconsolate aspect of 
his son, who was trying in vain to find a dry place 
on his jacket-sleeve, with which to wipe his face. 
Dolo alone did not join in the merriment, her 
dark eyes keenly noting every element of the 
ridiculous in the picture, but her strange little 
face impassive. A moment more and the boat 
was dexterously beached, Mr. Yorke and the girls 
walking on to the landing point for the purpose 
of joining the youthful sailors and Seeing what 
they had brought over from the coast. Robert, 
dark-haired and red-cheeked, a manly young fel- 
low with the dusky promise of a mustache on his 
upper lip, turned to greet them, handing his 
father a packet of newspapers and magazines. 

“Anything for us ” asked Del. 


20 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Dolo shrugged her left shoulder. She was 
angry with Del for asking. As if there was ever 
anything for them ! 

“Not this time. Del/’ replied Robert, with the 
friendly, smiling look that was so much at home 
on his tanned face ; “father is the only one of us 
in luck to-day. Here, Eric, shoulder these grocer- 
ies for Cap’n Noll, like a good fellow, and if Nat 
will take Mr. Rexford’s, I can manage ours.” 

Eric, a mischievous-faced laddie, who looked, 
with his frank, blue eyes and curly, chestnut 
hair, as if he might be the son of an old Norse 
Viking, scrambled back into the boat after the 
provision bags, which were snugly wrapped about 
with a piece of canvas and an old water-proof 
coat. 

“ Good enough ! I thought the books had got 
wet, for sure, when Nat caught his ducking,” 
called the boy; “but they’re dry as — as” — 

“Yes, go ahead, now — as what.?” growled Nat, 
closely occupied in wringing water out of such 
handfuls of his apparel as he could conveniently 
seize. 

But Eric was not quick at similes, and Dolo 
broke in eagerly, yet with a perceptible shyness 
and restraint even in her eagerness — 

“More books, Rob .? What are they .? ” 

“I don’t know, Dolo,” replied Robert, kindly; 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


21 


for there was always a peculiar gentleness in the 
big fellow’s manner toward this wild, reticent 
little neighbor of his, with the bright, unsatisfied 
eyes; can’t tell you. Father put his list in an 
envelope for safe keeping, as he always does, and 
the clerk made up the package while I was fum- 
bling around at the dry goods counter, trying to 
match the unmatchable for Grandma Brimble- 
comh. I suspect Baby Merry is to have a new 
pinafore or some other furbelow that will make 
Nick more her slave than ever — not to mention 
the cap’n. So you must ask father about the 
books.” 

Dolo faced silently about upon Mr. Yorkb. 

“All in good time, my child,” he said, in answer 
to her look and attitude; “but a pleasure is twice 
a pleasure when it is a surprise. Here, Robert, 
haven’t you something for me to take.!*” 

“No, sir,” replied Robert, cheerily, trudging 
along the south beach with the lion’s share of the 
cargo upon his back and in his capacious pockets, 
while the rest of the party followed in a flock. 
“I’m even trimmed. Couldn’t spare a pound 
from either side without losing my balance. And 
we couldn’t overload that drowned rat there, while 
as for Eric, I’ll risk his ever dying of hard work. 
He’s lazy on principle, to keep Old Susannah in 
countenance.” 


22 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Hear that!” exclaimed Eric, “when I am 
weighted down like a camel. I wish I was Nat. 
I believe he got wet on purpose.” 

Their father, indifferent to this boyish banter, 
had already stayed his steps, evidently not expect- 
ing that his offer of assistance would be accepted, 
and had turned to look out once more over the 
wide waters. 

“Wait, children,” he said, authoritatively; “the 
moonlight has a message for us. Shall we be 
deaf when Nature speaks in such accents as 
these ? ” 

Dole’s black eyes flashed three swift glances at 
the burdens under which the three boys were 
bending, but Del fell back to Mr. Yorke’s side, 
clinging affectionately to his arm, and the lads 
halted good-naturedly, though with more of patience 
than enthusiasm in their manner, for in addition to 
the weight of the loads, they were supperless and 
tired with the long pull from the mainland. But 
the scene was well worth the gaze. The sunset 
colors had faded, so that now the soft amethyst of 
the sky melted imperceptibly into the soft ame- 
thyst of the ocean. One faithful star shone in 
the wake of the moon, which no longer glinted 
palely on the water, but cast across the waves a 
broad path of amber light, widening with distance 
and twinkling with innumerable flakes of gold. 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


23 


They looked in silence for a few moments, and 
then Mr. Yorke’s voice was heard saying in the 
monotonous, far-away tone of one talking in a 
reverie — 

“You are glad waves to-night, because the 
moon, whose sway you own, is no chill, distant 
monitress, but a present joy and glory, shedding 
upon you the very mantle of her splendor. And 
yet, when she withdraws again, as soon she will, 
into mysterious gloom, lending not a ray to light 
you in your tasks, not the faintest gleam to sig- 
nify her acceptance or even knowledge of your 
service, still with ebb and flow you will answer 
her high bidding no less loyally than now — no 
less loyally, though we who listen shall hear you 
sobbing in the dark.” 

Dolo, protected by the dusk, shrugged her left 
shoulder, but not as emphatically as usual, and 
silence fell again upon the little company, broken 
by Eric, who spoke in an undertone — 

“What do you think it looks like, Rob — that 
moonshine on the sea.? It makes me think of 
Jacob’s ladder.” 

Robert laughed softly. “I’m not much of a 
fellow for fancies,” he answered, shifting his 
heavy provision-bag from one shoulder to the 
other ; “ I was only thinking it would be mighty 
convenient if the moon would play pilot once in 


24 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


a while, and guide a ship through the rocks by a 
path like that. It seems rather thrown away on 
such open sailing as ours here.” 

^‘Life is not open sailing — even ours here,” 
suggested his father, still dreamily ; “ I could wish 
for a lighted path before me to mark the way.” 

“It looks to me,” said Del, “as if a procession 
of little yellow-slippered moon-fairies had been 
dancing across the sea and their feet had left 
twinkles wherever they touched the water.” 

“Thetis’ tinsel-slipper’d feet,” murmured Mr. 
Yorke, but nobody except Eric, and perhaps the 
ghost of Milton, with the dimmer ghost of old 
Homer behind him, caught the words, and cer- 
tainly Eric, growing more and more conscious of 
an aching void where his supper should have 
been, failed to make the connection of ideas. 

Mr. Yorke presently continued, baring his head 
as he spoke — “This moonlight path is so like 
my thought of the golden streets of the New 
Jerusalem, I could almost expect to see the spirits 
of the blest come gliding down it toward us.” 

Del clasped her little brown hands tightly on 
the rusty coat-sleeve. 

“Oh, if mamma could only come!” she said, 
the tears brimming her uplifted eyes. 

Dolo turned abruptly and walked away. All 
her movements were swift and supple. Robert 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


25 


cast a hesitating glance after the deserter, then 
another toward his father, still lost in musing, and 
finally spoke with a certain respectful firmness in 
his tone — 

“It’s getting late, sir. Miss Lucas will be 
wondering where the girls are, and mother will 
be wanting to clear the table and go to bed; 
besides, here’s Nat shivering in his wet clothes. 
So, if 3^ou’ll excuse us, I think we must be going 
on.” 

Mr. Yorke waved his hand abstractedly, and 
the young people, leaving him standing on the 
edge of the beach, with his face uplifted to the 
great, golden orb of the moon, moved away up 
shore, Del keeping close to the water-line, only 
starting back a step or two with a merry out- 
cry, whenever some especially enterprising wave 
succeeded in splashing her bare ankles. Eric 
trudged on beside her, fretting a little, as a hun- 
gry and tired boy will, under his burden, but 
laughing more, while Robert, three times as heav- 
ily laden, swung along a few paces in advance, 
smiling but silent. 

Nat had pushed on ahead to overtake Dolo, 
who cast one black-eyed glance at the wet, awk- 
ward young fellow, the only ill-favored scion of 
the house of Yorke, and then kept her gaze stead- 
fastly fixed upon the moonlight path. 


26 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


"‘What made you go away so all at once.?” 
asked Nat, stammering a little in his utterance. 

Dolo shrugged her left shoulder. 

“You know,” she said. 

“Because Del was talking about” — 

Dolo nodded. 

“But you can’t remember,” said Nat. 

“Can’t I.?” returned Dolo, scornfully. They 
were of laconic speech, this dark-visaged little girl 
and the tall, sandy-haired, gray-eyed boy beside 
her. After a few minutes of rapid walking, Dolo 
stepping lightly and surely and Nat stumbling 
over every tangle of seaweed and splashing into 
every hole and gully, Dolo spoke again. 

“Did Uncle Maurice suppose you boys wanted 
nothing but moonshine for your supper.?” 

“Don’t you pitch into my father,” replied Nat, 
almost fiercely. 

“Then don’t you drip water on me,” retorted 
Dolo, with seeming irrelevance. 

“ Father was all right,” insisted Nat; “we fel- 
lows weren’t so terrible hungry that we couldn’t 
spare five minutes for a picture like that. There 
are suppers enough, first and last, but full moon 
comes only once a month.” 

“And the bags weren’t heavy, I suppose?” 
said Dolo. 

“Not so very,” replied Nat, loyally. 


THE MOONLIGHT PATH. 


27 


Dolo laughed a short little laugh, with a blend- 
ing of amusement and kindliness in it. 
like you, Nat,” she remarked. 

Nat stumbled over a hillock of sand and had a 
curious sensation as if he were all legs and 
awkwardness. 

After they had walked on in silence a while 
longer, Nat asked, “What does that moonlight 
look like to you } ” 

“Like moonlight,” said Dolo, curtly. “What 
does it lo5k like to you ? ” 

“Like nothing — not even like moonlight,” 
rejoined Nat, with something of his father’s 
dreamy manner upon him ; but he presently said 
with more energy, as he put down his bag for an 
instant and swung his long arms together to get 
them warm, chilled as they were by the clinging 
sleeves of the wet jacket — 

“The thing I thought, while all the rest were 
talking, was only that it would be good if some- 
thing to help us could come sailing over that yel- 
low track to the island — something to change all 
our lives, yours and mine and father’s and every- 
body’s.” 

“Let’s pretend it will,” exclaimed Dolo, with a 
sudden change of tone; “we know it won’t, but 
just for once let’s pretend.” 

“Well; there’s nothing coming now,” said Nat. 


28 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


‘‘To-morrow night, then,” said Dolo ; “to-mor- 
row night we shall see a boat with our good for- 
tune in it sailing to us over that shining path.” 

Nat stared at her strangely in the moonlight. 

“’Twould be queer if we should,” he said, 
slowly; “but most things are queer.” 


CHAPTER II. 


THE ISLANDERS 


Not a blade of grass but has a story to tell, not a heart but has 
its romance, not a life which does not hide a secret that is either 
its thorn or its spur. Everywhere grief, hope, comedy, tragedy. 


— Henri-Frederic Amiel. 


AKE up, Dolo,” murmured Del, sleepily. 



V V turning her head on her hard, flat pillow; 
“Miss Lucas has called us twice.” 

Dolo, standing already dressed by the open 
window, deigned no response, and drowsy Del, 
feeling that she had done her duty by her sister, 
dropped off into another nap. 

It was a fair, fresh morning. The sky, pale 
blue at the horizon, but deepening into brightest 
azure toward the zenith, was cloudless. The 
wide expanse of ocean, sapphire-shaded, dimpled, 
lit by a million ripples of sunshine, extended as 
far as eye could reach. The billows broke song- 
fully on the shore, the instantaneous wave-wall 
now revealing hints of emerald and umber and 


30 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


now flashing with belts and patches of dazzling, 
silvery light. The tide was just beginning to 
ebb, and the surf, shattered into coquettish wave- 
lets, curled and crisped and bubbled and shim- 
mered on the glittering wet sand. 

“Breakfast is ready,” said a voice from below 
stairs. It was a singular voice, dull and even, 
with almost no play of intonations. Del started 
at the sound. 

“ Oh, Dolo, why didn’t you wake me ? I shall 
be late.” 

“I sha’n’t,” coolly responded Dolo, and walked 
out of the small, rough-boarded chamber with an 
exasperatingly indifferent air. 

Del, a shade of vexation showing for an instant, 
but no longer, upon her winsome face, tossed 
back her mass of auburn tresses which, as she 
stood a moment by the window, the sunshine with 
a Midas touch transformed to waving gold, and 
hummed a light tune while hurrying her toilet. 

The tune ceased, however, as she clambered 
down the ladder-like stairway and entered the din- 
ing-room. This was long and low, with unpainted 
walls, scant, plain furniture, and shelves holding a 
frugal supply of the coarsest table-ware. There 
was no trace of ornament anywhere discernible. 
At one end of the forbidding apartment stood a 
round table spread for breakfast. About this 


THE ISLANDERS. 


31 


family board, partaking in silence of coffee, oat- 
meal and Johnny-cake, sat Mr. Rexford, Miss 
Lucas the housekeeper, and Dolo. Mr. Rexford 
was a man who would at once attract and puzzle 
observation. His hair, though thick, was white, 
his stern face was deeply graven, and his general 
aspect indicated the prime of middle life. Miss 
Lucas, who sat opposite him, was large and dark, 
with an expressionless, almost stolid face. She 
wore a mourning brooch at her throat and a 
mourning ring on her left hand, but for the rest 
her dress was a well-worn alpaca, made with the 
same ungraceful severity of pattern that charac- 
terized the gray flannel frocks of Del and Dolo. 
It was supplemented at the neck by a narrow 
linen collar. 

Dolo, looking smaller, darker and colder than 
ever, sat between the two. When Del entered, 
Dolo had already pushed back her saucer, but she 
had not quitted her seat. In reality, Dolo wanted 
another piece of Johnny-cake, but the plate was 
beyond her reach, and she would at any time go 
without a desired article of food rather than ask 
any one to pass it to her. She waited, however, 
in the hope that her father might soon withdraw, 
leaving her at liberty to jump up and help herself. 

Del took her place at the table without bidding 
the family good-morning or asking Miss Lucas to 


32 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


excuse her tardiness. These courtesies were not 
exacted or expected here. Nor was any word of 
greeting or rebuke spoken to her, although Mr. 
Rexford glanced at the clock and drew his white 
eyebrows nearer together — a slight movement, 
yet enough to call the rose-color into Del’s cheeks 
and a malicious sparkle to Dolo’s eyes. Miss 
Lucas poured for the late-comer a glass of milk 
and handed her a saucer of oatmeal without 
speaking. As Del helped herself to a square of 
Johnny-cake from the plate that stood before her, 
she noticed Dolo’s look following her hand, and, 
yielding to one of her natural sunny impulses, 
broke the frigid silence by saying smilingly, as 
she lifted the plate — 

“Miss Lucas, Dolo would like another bit.” 

“No, I wouldn’t,” said Dolo, promptly; and 
pushed back her chair. 

As Del, a few minutes later, pushed back her 
own, Mr. Rexford turned upon her with a list- 
less question — 

“Who brought in our groceries last night, 
Delia.?” 

“Nathan Yorke, sir.” 

“Tell him to come over at four o’clock this 
afternoon for Calculus, and I will settle the bill.” 

“It’s Robert who keeps the accounts, sir,” 
said Del. 


THE ISLANDERS. 


33 


Mr. Rexford’s black eyes flashed. The resem- 
blance between himself and Dole grew marked. 
His voice was no longer listless. 

“You heard what I said.?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

“Then do it.” 

“Yes, sir.” 

Mr. Rexford took a straw hat from a peg behind 
the door, and strode out over the bluff toward the 
beach, attended only by his shadow. It always 
seemed to the children that his shadow was darker 
than any other cast on the island. 

It must be confessed, however, that the island 
measured but three miles in length. As for 
width, it was an irregular right-angled triangle in 
shape, with the right angle to the northwest, the 
base running down for something more than a 
mile into the Atlantic. It was upon Hypothenuse 
Beach, as the mathematical Nathan had dubbed it 
— the beach which faced the ocean — or in one 
case upon the upland just above, that the four res- 
idences of Hermit Island were built, one solitary 
little hut in the southwest corner, the remaining 
three, which had all been originally designed for 
summer cottages, and had been rudely patched so 
as to offer a more or less effectual resistance to 
the wintry weather, further to the east. The 
favorite point of observation was the eastern tip. 


34 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


where the beholder could turn at will from the 
coast-line on the left to the ocean view before 
and on the right. It was here that Mr. Yorke 
had been musing in the moonlight, waiting for the 
return of the dory in which his sons made their 
weekly trip to the mainland, and brought back 
supplies for the families who dwelt in the three 
neighboring houses. The lonely hut was inhab- 
ited by a very old and eccentric recluse, the Her- 
mit, from whom, some fifty years before, when he 
was the only resident, the island had derived its 
name. The cottage nearest his own, though dis- 
tant by more than a mile, was the Rexford house, 
bare and comfortless without and within. Del 
and Dolo were always glad to escape the cheer- 
less rooms, whose blank walls echoed no merry 
voices nor sounds' of song and laughter ; gladder 
still to escape the lifeless housekeeper, from 
whose lips they had never heard a harsh word, 
but in whose eyes they had never seen a loving 
smile; and gladdest of all to escape the dreaded 
father, whose gloomy silence chilled their glad 
young blood and blighted all the natural home- 
gayety of girlhood. 

Within five minutes after Del had pushed back 
her chair, while Miss Lucas was gathering up the 
breakfast dishes and mechanically going about 
the various household tasks, in which she never 


THE ISLANDERS. 


35 


asked the girls to help her, those two brown little 
gypsies were already over the bluff and out upon 
the beach, on their way to school. The figure of 
their father — a slender, erect, even graceful form 
— was seen pacing the shore toward the western 
side of the island, his favorite haunt, because the 
farthest removed from his neighbors. As for 
the Hermit, Mr. Rexford and he were excellent 
strangers. If they chanced to meet, they averted 
their faces by common consent and passed each 
other in silence. The girls looked after their 
father for a moment and then took the opposite 
direction, their spirits rising with every step away 
from home. 

They were barefooted, as on the evening before, 
but this morning they wore upon their heads 
cloth caps with vizors. The fresh energy of the 
early day possessed them both. Del caroled 
snatches of sailor-songs as she tripped lightly over 
the glistening sand, and Dolo, catching up her 
short skirts, raced back and forth with the waves, 
running knee-deep into the water. As they 
approached the second cottage, a cozy, gaily- 
painted little structure with the stars and stripes 
flying from a flag-staff on the edge of the roof, 
Dolo, who was in advance, turned suddenly, lay- 
ing her finger on her lip and pointing with the 
other hand to a small figure seated upon the 


36 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


piazza steps. Del failed at first to notice the 
gesture and went on blithely trolling — 

A wet deck and a flowing sea, 

And a wind that follows fast, 

And fills the white and rustling sail 
And bends the gallant mast ! ” 

Dolo’s black eyes snapped with impatience, but 
in an instant more Del had seen her signal and 
hushed the spirited strains, following softly after 
Dolo, who led the way with a peculiarly noiseless, 
agile, Indian-like motion to the hither side of the 
piazza, so that they were sheltered from the obser- 
vation of the child upon the steps, her back being 
toward them, while they themselves, by standing 
on tiptoe and peeping over the rail, could both 
see and hear. What they saw was a little girl of 
three or four summers, dressed in a wide straw 
hat, with fluttering blue ribbons, a tiny red 
sacque, rubbed white on the under side of the 
sleeves, a blue skirt, prettily embroidered, and a 
pair of stubby, rusty-red shoes. The face was 
turned away, bent over a large, square picture- 
book, but the rounded outlines of the baby form 
were attractive, and so were the soft, golden- 
brown locks of hair, blowing about the small 
brown ears and curling low in the small brown 
neck. What they heard was an irregular chant. 


THE ISLANDERS. 


37 


delivered with much gusto in a cooing baby voice, 
the wee reader evidently improvising words and 
music to please herself — 


“ This is about seven young owls 
And seven chick-fowls. 


‘‘The chick-fowls lived in a great big large hole 
in a thunder-cloud, an’ once they flewed so fast, 
their wings got flewed off. An’ the owls laughed 
an’ said, ‘Aint it funny and aint it elegant to 
see seven chick-fowls with their wings all flewed 
off.^’ Then corned along a little boy, all sickie, 
an’ the doctor looked at his pulse an’ said, ‘You 
must fly a kite quicker’n nothin’,, or you’ll die, 
die, die. You’ll die. You’ll die.’ Then the lit- 
tle boy flied the kite an’ it went up, up, up — 
way past the owls and the chick-fowls, way up 
to heaven. An’ God said, ‘You lovely kite! 
You’ve been so good. I’m goin’ to let you have a 
breeze all day.’ An’ the kite flied. An’ the kite 
flied. 


“An’ by an’ by 
It flied so high, 

It flied so high an’ bold, 

It never corned back, 

It never corned back. 

It never corned back till old.” 


38 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The conclusion of this thrilling narrative was 
greeted with a roar of gruffest, proudest laughter, 
and out upon the piazza strutted an enormous- 
bodied, triple-chinned old gentleman, whom a 
single eye-blink would recognize anywhere as a 
retired sea-captain. Sailor was written all over 
him — in the rolling gait, bronzed face and neck 
and tattooed wrists, no more distinctly than in the 
twinkling gray eyes and breezy, jolly, independent 
presence, while his pompous strut and certain 
autocratic lines about the mouth revealed the 
monarch of the deck. 

“Well done, my hearty!” he vociferated, catch- 
ing the flushed and frowning child up in his arms 
and swinging her to a seat on his great shoulder ; 
“you didn’t think as how gramp was hiding in the 
hall and hearing all that nice little yarn now, did 
you ? An’ if here aint the girls hidin’, too I Ho, 
ho, ho I Mornin’ to you both ! Come in, come 
in ; well, now — well ! I thought the sunrise was 
over long ago, but I see my Lady Blue-eyes has 
caught the pinkest of it on her cheeks.” 

Del, blushing and dimpling, ran lightly up the 
steps, but Dolo remained where she was, standing 
on the ground below the piazza. From this sta- 
tion she reached up her arms over the rail and 
called to the baby with a soft, inarticulate cooing- 
sound. 


THE ISLANDERS. 


39 


Baby Merry — short for America, so named 
because her great brown eyes first looked upon 
the world on the glorious Fourth of July — having 
a poetic yearning for solitude during such times 
as she delivered herself of her improvisations, 
was ill-pleased to find that on this occasion she 
had been out-witted. The delicate-featured, clear- 
complexioned little face, brown as an acorn, was 
clouded with anger, the rose-bud mouth pouted, 
the wee brows puckered, the brown eyes brimmed 
with passionate tears. 

“Le’ me down, you naughty, naughty gramp, 
or I’ll bump you all up,” she cried, defiantly, her 
little brown fists beating a vigorous tattoo on her 
grandfather’s grizzled pate. 

He set her down hastily, with an exclamation 
whose only virtue was emphasis, and the child, 
striking away Del’s extended hand, flew to Dolo, 
who lifted her over the piazza rail to the ground. 
Here Baby Merry, winking back her tears, clung 
silently to Dolo’s skirt, the girl’s dark face, bent 
downward toward the little one, transfigured into 
beauty by the sudden glow of tenderness that 
transfused it. She barely touched the baby’s 
quivering chin with one swift finger, but the 
child was comforted. She nestled closer to Dolo, 
patting and stroking the folds of the rough frock, 
and presently looked up, in response to some low, 


40 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


coaxing word, with a smile which flooded all her 
tiny face with sunshine. 

The captain, who had been surveying with a 
rueful stare the results of his rash intrusion, drew 
a long breath of relief, inflating his broad chest 
until it revealed, above the low collar of the blue 
flannel shirt, the top of a tipsy lighthouse tower 
pricked in red India ink — an ornament in which 
Captain Brimblecomb gloried. He liked to wear 
his shirts open at the throat, so that this work 
of art might not be entirely withheld from the 
admiring gaze of Hermit Island — more especially 
of young Hermit Island. For the old recluse had 
never seen it, and Mr. Rexford had evinced so lit- 
tle interest in the exhibition that the captain had 
indignantly refrained from the customary courtesy 
of rolling up his sleeves and displaying his brawny 
arms, blazoned over in red and blue with ships, 
icebergs and compasses, besides seals, polar bears 
and various marine animals whose precise identity 
the liberal genius of the artist had left undeter- 
mined. The captain had, moreover, an anchor 
pricked in blue on the back of his left wrist and a 
starry flag on his right. 

/'Queer, aint it. Blue-eyes,” he said to Del in a 
husky whisper, “that Baby should take to Dolo 
so.? Not that there’s any reason why she should 
not, bless you,” the gallant captain added, hastily; 


THE ISLANDERS. 


41 


‘^only Dole's a bit offish, like a whale with a har- 
poon in him, and it’s risky steering for most of us 
in her waters.” 

“ Dolo is always nice with Baby,” said Del, not 
without an effort. 

Gentle as a summer sea,” puffed the captain, 
cordially; “and that reminds me of an adventure 
of mine, rather curious, down there among the 
South Sea Islands, thirty odd years ago. You 
wouldn’t like to hear it now, would you.?” 

“Yes, I would, Cap’n Noll,” responded Del, 
promptly, but with less enthusiasm than usual. 
In their little world, it was a rare experience for 
her to see her sister preferred before herself, and 
it hurt her with a stinging prick, which she did 
not understand. She watched Dolo and Baby 
Merry with a puzzled look, lending but an indif- 
ferent ear to the captain, who, strutting up and 
down the piazza, his weather-stained face bright- 
ening with each turn which brought him again 
fronting the sea, was fluently reeling off one of 
his innumerable tales of personal prowess on the 
deep. But as Dolo and the baby, walking hand 
in hand, disappeared around the corner of the 
house, Del brought her attention, with a guilty 
start, back to the story-teller. 

“And so,” he was saying, in the deep, growl- 
ing tone which always marked the recital of some 


42 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


episode wherein his redoubted valor had played 
a conspicuous part, “so when I saw those brown 
fellers swarming over the vessel’s side, I never 
stopped to give the alarm, but I just snatched up 
a cutlass and went for ’em, slashing right and left, 
one man against two or three hundred. Slash ? 
How I did slash ! Every stroke cut clean through 
a knot o’ those twisting brown bodies. They fell 
by dozens. They jumped over the side by scores. 
The boards under my feet swam in blood, so that 
I was hard put to it to keep my footing. The 
water below was full of drowning natives. In 
five minutes, single-handed, in five minutes I had 
cleared that deck.” 

“O-li-ver Crom-well ^rimAAQ-comb ! ” exclaimed 
a rebuking voice from the hall, and the rosy, 
wrinkled face of the captain’s fat little wife looked 
out of the open door. 

The captain waved her back with imperious 
majesty. 

“ But as I wiped the hacked stump of that cut- 
lass, I was as cool as I had ever been in my life. 
‘Have a ship of his own.? The devil he shall!’ 
That was what the head owner said, when the 
story came home to him. ‘Don’t talk to me of 
his youth. A youngster of that mettle is a sight 
fitter to give orders than to take ’em.’ And for 
the thirty odd years since,” concluded the captain. 


THE ISLANDERS. 


43 


triumphantly, ^‘for the thirty odd years since — 
goin’ on forty — with me to live is to command.” 

At this inopportune moment Baby Merry trot- 
ted around the corner of the house, slowly fol- 
lowed by Dolo. Baby climbed up on the piazza, 
carrying in one small hand a snail-shell filled with 
sea- water. Her brown eyes sparkled with enter- 
prise, and determination was manifest in the tread 
of the stubby little shoes. 

“Gramp, you lie down on your back, now,” she 
cried. The towering figure of the ocean hero 
seemed suddenly to collapse. 

“Not now, Baby,” he pleaded, glancing depre- 
catingly toward Del and Dolo. 

“Now,” repeated Baby Merry, with emphasis, 
stamping her tiny foot; “I’m playin’ that you’re 
my sweet little boy, my little Nolly, an’ you’re 
sickie, dear little Nolly, an’ must take this med’- 
cine nicely to please mamma.” 

“Well, well! only don’t make me drink that 
horrid stuff,” begged the poor captain, stretching 
out his elephantine bulk somewhat sheepishly on 
the piazza floor. 

“Hush!” said Baby Merry, sternly; “not one 
word. Just mind your mamma, little Nolly, you 
horrid, wicked, awful little child, or I’ll stand you 
in the corner,” and perching herself, by a vigorous 
scramble, astride the mighty chest, she persisted 


44 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


in emptying the contents of the snail-shell into 
her grandfather’s twisting and protesting mouth. 

Del broke into laughter, in which Grandma 
Brimblecomb joined, her fat sides shaking like 
jelly, while Dole’s eyes shone with a gleam that 
was more sarcastic than mirthful. The captain 
choked over his dose and coughed violently, the 
baby meanwhile jouncing gleefully up and down 
upon his chest. 

"‘Take her off,” he called, between his gasps; 
“Baby, get down off poor gramp, quick.” 

“I won’t,” said Baby Merry, with sweet dis- 
tinctness, her lips parted in a roguish smile that 
displayed the twinkling rows of little white teeth, 
while the brown eyes danced with mischief. 

“Get off at once,” roared her grandfather, in 
the voice that had frightened the tempests. 

“No, I won’t,” repeated Baby, in cherubic 
tones. 

But the grandmother, wiping her eyes, started, 
still shaking, to the rescue of the discomfited 
giant. Baby Merry, seeing this ally approaching, 
gave her grandpa’s grizzled beard a parting tweak 
and jumped hastily down from her triumphant 
eminence, sending back over her shoulder, as she 
scampered out of sight, the nonchalant farewell — 

“I was ’bout tired o’ that play, anyhow. That’s 
the why I got down, grandma. Guess I’ll go and 


THE ISLANDERS. 


45 


play with Mr. Ocean now. You bring Mr. Monk, 
Dolo. ’By, gramp.” 

Cap’n Noll rose slowly, rubbing his chest and 
coughing reproachfully, but nevertheless eying 
with irrepressible pride the small figure of his 
grandchild trotting off down the beach. Grandma 
Brimblecomb bustled about with a belated show 
of wifely devotion, dusting off the captain’s broad 
back with her apron and rising on tiptoe, during 
the operation, to smile at the girls over his shoul- 
ders. But Del and Dolo soon took their leave 
and started after Baby Merry, Dolo carrying Mr. 
Monk under her arm. 

This last member of the Brimblecomb family 
should by no means be passed over without intro- 
duction. He was, in the eyes of Baby Merry, at 
least, the most important personage, next to her 
diminutive self, upon the island. As his name 
indicates, Mr. Monk was a doll half way between 
man and monkey. In character he was meek and 
long-suffering to a fault, but in personal appear- 
ance he was hideous. His exceedingly brown 
skin was fashioned of rough cotton flannel. He 
was flashily dressed in red jacket with dogshead 
brass buttons, red cap and pantalettes, and a 
black skirt, beneath which hung dejectedly down 
two bare brown feet and a long brown tail. His 
garments were much the worse for an active life. 


46 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


exposure to the weather and demonstrative affec- 
tion. His features, consisting principally of cot- 
ton flannel nose, but subordinately of red worsted 
mouth and button eyes, wore a singularly villain- 
ous expression. In proportion as his little mis- 
tress idolized him, he was detested by all her 
friends, and between too much love and too little, 
Mr. Monk’s lot was a hard one. On this occasion 
Dolo carried him upside down, as a convenient 
method of venting her animosity. This exposed 
Mr. Monk to harrowing anxiety, for Major, a 
shaggy old Newfoundland, the only four-footed 
retainer of the Brimblecomb estate, cherished an 
especial grudge against the poor doll, and now, 
having slipped out from under the piazza to 
escort the girls on their way to school, twice 
so far forgot his dignity, while he was stalking 
along beside Dolo, as to snap at Mr. Monk’s red 
cap. 

Del ran on in advance of her sister, calling and 
whistling to Major. Dolo smiled her not alto- 
gether pleasant smile and gave the dog’s black 
head a stroke. He looked after Del uneasily, 
then wagged his tail and kept close to Dolo’s side. 
The puzzled look came into Del’s blue eyes again, 
as she turned and surveyed the group. Dolo 
glanced toward the bright little figure of Baby 
Merry, who, down by the water’s edge, was dig- 


THE ISLANDERS. 


47 


ging vigorously with a large clam-shell in the 
sand. Then she bent over Major, throwing one 
arm about his shaggy neck and holding Mr. 
Monk, whose button orbs stared helplessly into 
the angry eyes of the dog, to Major’s mouth. 

“Take him to Baby, sir,” Dolo commanded, in 
clear, cold tones. 

Every hair on Major’s body seemed to rise in 
repugnance. He growled, and his white teeth 
looked as if they would tear Mr. Monk into cotton 
flannel bits. 

“Don’t hurt him,” said Dolo, sternly; “take 
him to Baby, quick.” 

“He’ll not do it,” called Del; “it’s no use 
trying.” 

“You see,” retorted Dolo. 

And to Del’s astonishment, the dog presently 
extended his head, took Mr. Monk’s black skirt in 
a gingerly fashion between his teeth, looked up 
into Dolo’s eyes for moral support, gave a little 
undergrowl of final protest and raced off across 
the beach to Baby Merry, before whose feet 
he dropped his odious burden, not a shred of 
Mr. Monk’s finery nor a feature of Mr. Monk’s 
expressive countenance, the worse. 

“Good dog!” called Dolo; “now stay and take 
care of Baby.” 

With an air of resignation. Major stretched 


48 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


himself upon the wet sand between his small 
charge and the surf. Dolo laughed and clam- 
bered after Del up the low bluff, the girls turning 
their steps toward a third house, larger than the 
others and standing back from the water upon the 
higher ground. 

“It was mean in you to make Major carry Mr. 
Monk, when you know how he hates him,” said 
Del, with an unwonted flash of her blue eyes. 

Dolo laughed again and shrugged her left 
shoulder. 

“Major’s devoted to you, and that’s the very 
reason why you like to torment him,” added Del, 
almost angrily. 

Dolo continued to laugh. 

The dwelling which the girls were now nearing 
had something of the appearance of a small farm- 
house. Starting out in life as a summer cottage, 
it had taken on a long addition, which was appar- 
ently given over to kitchen and dairy purposes. 
Milk-pans were sunning upon a rude bench beside 
one of the numerous back doors ; three Devon 
cows, well known to the children of the island as 
Bessie, Jessie and Old Susannah, were grazing 
in a sandy pasture near by ; a flock of awkward 
Brahmapootra hens were industriously scratching 
and pecking in a slatted enclosure; an old cat. 
Frisk, who had long since outgrown the signifi- 


THE ISLANDERS. 


49 


cance of a name bestowed in his far-away days of 
kittenhood, was dozing in a patch of catnip ; Eric 
Yorke was hoeing in a vegetable garden behind 
the house ; Robert, with a hayfork in his hand, 
was standing in the door of a rough-boarded barn, 
talking earnestly with Nathan; and Mrs. Yorke, 
her fourth and youngest son, little Nick, tagging 
her every step, was moving about among her 
flowers. For in the waste-land on the seaward 
side of the house a space had been cleared among 
the grass and weeds, and here were displayed 
flower-beds in circles, squares and oblongs, all 
fringed by the fresh green and white of sweet 
alyssum, this surrounded by still another border, 
sometimes of small white stones, sea-polished till 
they glittered in the morning sun, and sometimes 
of clam-shells, as nearly as possible of a size, the 
convexity uppermost and the broad edge turned 
outward. Here blossomed yellow marigolds, elfin- 
faced pansies, bright-winged, airy-hearted sweet- 
peas, petunias, verbenas and nunlike mignon- 
nette, with the inevitable geranium. Mrs. Yorke, 
holding back her calico skirts from the dewy 
leaves, was a thin, stooping woman, once fair and 
blithesome, but now with silvered hair, drooping 
mouth and a look of settled disappointment in 
eyes of faded blue. 

“ Oh, Aunt Marion ! ” called Del, breathlessly. 


50 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


from the top of the hluff, “is Uncle Maurice 
going to keep school to-day ? ” 

“You must ask him,” replied Mrs. Yorke, lift- 
ing her head with a weary gesture. 

Little Nick, a frail, serious-faced child five or 
six years of age, nestled his cheek against the 
worn hand he clasped in both his own, and peeped 
out at the girls demurely from the shelter of his 
mother’s skirts. 

Eric threw down his hoe with a boyish shout 
and came running from the garden. Robert 
strolled across from the barn, slowly followed by 
Nathan. Bessie and Jessie came to the bars and 
reached their red noses over, expecting a handful 
or two of clover — expectations which Del hast- 
ened to fulfill. Old Susannah turned her lazy 
head with a moo of welcome. The greedy hens 
were alone indifferent, for even Frisk winked one 
sleepy eye, and Uncle Maurice, a pen in his hand, 
leaned out of an upper window. 

“School.? Yes, my dears!” he said, cheerily. 
“It’s fine weather for brains. Come up, all of 
you, and let’s see what we would like to learn this 
sunshiny morning.” 


CHAPTER III. 


SCHOOL. 


The best that we can do for one another is to exchange our 
thoughts freely. — James Anthony Froude. 



NCLE MAURICE was assuredly the queer- 


^ est of schoolmasters. This proposition 
admits of a threefold proof. In the first place, 
he would accept no salary ; in the second, he gave 
as many holidays as he kept school-days ; and in 
the third, he taught his scholars only what they 
desired to know. In regard to the first point. 
Uncle Maurice had been heard to say, in refusing 
the fee which Mr. Rexford tendered him for the 
tutoring of the two girls, that there was no right- 
ful connection between money and wisdom — that 
the true and the beautiful in science were no more 
to be bartered for dollars than blue sky or sweet 
air or love itself. “The best is ever a gift,” he 
said; “it cannot be bought and sold.” In regard 
to the second point. Uncle Maurice claimed that 
holidays were holy days, with life and nature, 


52 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


mirth and wonder, for teachers, and that a mere 
human pedagogue, like . himself, was but a poor 
substitute for these. “No, no,” he would make 
answer to the children, when they flocked about 
him, begging for school, “the books are shut 
to-day, but earth and heaven are open. Run wild ! 
Run wild ! It is God who teaches best.” In 
regard to the third point. Uncle Maurice, when 
questioned upon it, was wont to laugh softly, as if 
to himself, and reply in metaphor that none but a 
hungry man could be depended upon to digest a 
dinner. So take him all in all, it must be con- 
ceded that this was an eccentric dominie. 

Yet it was pleasant to hear the joyous rush of 
young feet up the stairs in response to his sum- 
mons. It was good to see the gladness flashing 
from the eyes of these fresh-hearted students, who 
had not yet learned to associate study with any- 
thing but privilege and inspiration. Del and Eric 
led the van, Nat and Dolo followed, and Robert, 
with Nick on his shoulder, brought up the rear. 

Uncle Maurice’s study, through whose door the 
boys and girls surged impetuously, was a long, 
low chamber, its walls lined with books whose 
arrangement would have been the despair of a 
librarian. Here, for example, was a case labeled 
Poetry, yet containing Ruskin’s Complete Works, 
Carlyle’s Sartor Resartus, Amiel’s Journal, and 


SCHOOL. 


53 


many another volume guiltless of verse, while on 
the shelves marked English Prose stood, with a 
somewhat shamefaced expression. Young’s Night 
Thoughts, Blair’s Grave and — yes, the immortal 
Pope himself. Then, who ever heard of classify- 
ing essays under such heads as Whispers, Echoes, 
Trumpetings, Buzz and Cackle.? Or of arranging 
novelists as Brook-Natures, River-Natures, Ditch- 
Natures, Cistern-Natures, Fountain-Natures, Lake- 
Natures and Sea-Natures .? And the worst of it 
was that the key to this enigmatical catalogue 
existed nowhere save in Uncle Maurice’s head. 
The young people cherished a profound reverence 
for their schoolmaster’s library, and, easy as his 
discipline was, no boy or girl of them all ever 
took down a book from a shelf without his express 
permission. 

For the rest, the room held a narrow couch, 
with an army-blanket thrown across it, a desk 
which seemed all pigeon-holes, a long table strewn 
with books and papers, dictionary stands, newspa- 
per racks, scrap-baskets and all the varied para- 
phernalia of a writer-student’s sanctum. In a 
well-worn Sleepy Hollow reclined Uncle Maurice, 
the morning sunlight bringing out into clear view 
the silver threads in his brown hair, the wrinkles 
across the spacious forehead and the irresolute 
lines about the mouth ; but the loving eyes of his 


54 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


scholars, who were, except for Del and Dolo, his 
children as well, heeded hothing save the smile of 
greeting on the friendly lips and in the fatherly 
eyes. 

Even Dolo, who, alone of all the little flock, 
was prone to pass judgment on her master in her 
thoughts, had never a disloyal heart-beat toward 
him in the presence of his books. For here the 
illustrious dead, the truth-seekers and beauty- 
lovers of the great past, cast the mantle of their 
majesty around this lonely man, who had loved 
them better than he had loved his own fame or 
fortune. And here Dolo stood smitten with a 
deeper awe than the rest, her dark eyes wide and 
wistful, watching the sunlight as it blessed with 
the same golden touch the ranks of volumned 
shelves and the quiet figure in the chair, and list- 
ening, with a strange sense of a harmony just 
beyond her reach, to the hoarse time-murmur of 
the ocean. 

But Del and Eric had bestowed themselves on 
hassocks drawn up close to the master’s seat, 
Nick had run to his customary station between 
his father’s knees, Nat had perched himself at 
ungainly length on a high writing-stool, and Rob- 
ert was handing Dolo a chair. Why don’t you 
keep it yourself.?” asked Dolo, accepting the 
courtesy with an ungraciousness that was in real- 


SCHOOL. 


55 


ity a form of shyness. Robert laughed and 
remained leaning on the back of the chair, while 
Mr. Yorke proceeded to open school. 

For a few moments the master sat motionless, 
a reverie gathering in his eyes. Then he reached 
out one hand to the nearest shelf, drew down a 
book, turned the leaves lightly and read slowly 
and impressively, while his young audience heark- 
ened with reverent faces — 

“ ‘ A self-denial, no less austere than the saint’s’ 
is demanded of the scholar. He must worship 
truth, and forego all things for that, and choose 
defeat and pain, so that his treasure in thought is 
thereby augmented. God offers to every mind 
its choice between truth and repose. Take which 
you please — you can never have both.” 

The master closed the volume. 

‘‘ Eric, my son, what have you heard ? ” 

Eric’s frank face flushed crimson. “Honest 
and true, papa. I’m awfully ashamed. I’m always 
doing this, but I never will again. And indeed I 
heard some of it. I heard that a scholar must be 
just as good as a saint, because truth is a sort 
of religion, and then — then — the sunlight got 
into Del’s hair — and — and there was something 
about worshiping, and then the sea sounded so 
loud I didn’t hear the rest.” 

Mr. Yorke shook his head, smiling neverthe- 


56 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


less. “The wandering thought seldom brings 
riches home,” he said, and turned to Del, who 
repeated the passage without the slip of a single 
word. 

“But I don’t understand it,” she added. “Why 
can’t we have truth and repose both .? ” 

“Who wants repose, anyhow.!^” asked Nat, 
scornfully. 

“I do,” announced Dolo, with startling empha- 
sis; “that’s all I want truth for — repose.” 

“I want truth for truth,” rejoined Nat, half 
angrily; “I’d be ashamed to want it for anything 
else.” 

“What is truth.?” asked little Nick, the old, 
old question falling with strange effect from his 
childish lips. “ Is it something inside people, 
papa, or something outside people .? Can’t I have 
it.?” 

“Some day, please God,” answered Mr. Yorke, 
gently, stroking the small round head, “and some 
day repose with it, but not here. Not truth in 
repose, now or ever, but some day repose in 
truth. And it will be without us, all about us, 
like the air, and within us, like our own breath 
of being.” 

“Yes, papa, I understand,” said little Nick. 

But the elder scholars still had problems in 
their uplifted eyes, while one after another they 


SCHOOL. 


57 


repeated the strong words over, until each had the 
passage securely committed to memory. 

“And now I must be off,” said Robert, cheerily. 
“ But this has given me something to think about 
in the hayfield.” 

Mr. Yorke’s brow clouded over. 

“Must you go, Robert.?” he asked, wistfully. 
“What is hay .? ” 

“That’s not half as hard a question as Nick’s,” 
commented Dolo. 

“Well, sir,” said Robert, with his sunny smile, 
“it’s breakfast and dinner and supper to the cattle 
all the winter long, for one thing. I’m afraid I 
must go. No, Nat, I don’t want you, old fellow. 
Can’t let you eclipse your genius under a straw 
hat this morning. I believe in economy of forces. 
You’re the best head at the books, and I’m the 
best hand at the scythe. And Eric, you fraud, 
you needn’t make believe you’re coming. You’ve 
not the least notion of it.” 

“He’s afraid the sun would tan his bonny 
skin,” suggested Del, saucily. 

Eric retorted by a grimace and readily sank 
again upon the hassock from which he had made 
a feeble pretense of rising. Nat’s conscience, 
however, was not so easily quieted. 

“You always go, Rob,” he protested, swaying 
uneasily upon the high stool; “you always” — 


58 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Robert glanced warningly toward their father, 
and Nat, coloring, stammered and broke off. 

“You can help me a while after dinner,” said 
Robert, in his good-natured fashion, “and so shall 
this young lazybones, too,” giving Eric a slight, 
fraternal kick. “ You’ll please excuse me, father.? 
Good-by, girls.” 

A shadow seemed to fall upon the room with 
Robert’s departure. The sunshine forsook Del’s 
tresses, Nat’s eyes dropped before Dole’s quick, 
critical glance, and little Nick, feeling the chill 
in the atmosphere, began to fidget between his 
father’s knees. 

“ Run back to your mother and her flower-beds, 
Nick,” said Mr. Yorke, releasing the child; “out- 
doors is far the best school-room for pale-cheeked 
little boys.” 

“Mamma’s back in the kitchen by this time,” 
remarked Nick, slowly withdrawing ; “but maybe 
I’ll be a comfort to her, and maybe she’ll give me 
a cinnamon stick.” 

Mr. Yorke passed his hand across his forehead 
and sighed heavily. 

“Hayfield! kitchen!” he murmured, “and my 
own son I my own wife ! ” 

The master’s train of thought was so evidently 
becoming painful that Del, with her quick per- 
ception, reached up and touched his hand. 


SCHOOL. 


59 


“ Don’t send the rest of us away, please, Uncle 
Maurice. We want school all the week long. 
We’ve had so many holidays this summer. And 
we want to see the new books that came last 
night.” 

Oh, yes ; the new books ! ” echoed Dolo, 
eagerly, springing to her feet. 

At the mention of books Mr. Yorke became, 
for better or for worse, himself again. He rose 
from his chair with an eagerness almost equal to 
Dolo’s and lifted an opened newpaper that cov- 
ered one corner of the table. 

But before the children were able to lay their 
hands upon the volumes so disclosed, the master 
dropped the covering again and stood a moment 
erect, with the look upon his face as of a man say- 
ing grace before meat. What he did say was 
this — 

‘‘Listen to the words of Milton: ‘A good 
book is the precious life-blood of a ma*ster spirit, 
embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life 
beyond life. ’ ” 

Then he removed the paper once more. 

“Come, Del,” he said, smilingly, with a change 
of tone, “come and tell us which is whose.” 

Del came forward with a gleeful little skip, and, 
catching up the books in her arms, gave them a 
rapturous hug. Then she dropped upon the floor 


6o 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


with the new treasures in her lap and proceeded to 
turn them over and over in an excited hunt after 
titles. 

“But there are only six/’ she exclaimed; “some- 
body’s left out.” 

“Yes,” said Uncle Maurice, sorrowfully, “there 
is none for Robert. The one I sent for, the book- 
seller did not have.” 

“Poor old Rob!” remarked Eric, “he always 
gets cheated out of his share of things. It’s a 
shame.” 

“Then mind you show up in the hayfield this 
afternoon, if you feel so bad about Rob,” growled 
Nat, noticing how the cloud had returned to his 
father’s brow at Eric’s thoughtless words. 

“Well, I’m sure of one book!” announced Del; 
“this Age of Fable is for me and it’s the very 
prettiest and nicest book of all. Oh, I’m so 
pleased. Uncle Maurice ! ” 

“How do you know it’s for you?” demanded 
Dolo. 

“Why, it’s a mythology book, all make-believes, 
and so it never could be for you,” retorted Del. 
“ Oh, here’s a picture of An — An ” — 

“Andromeda?” suggested Uncle Maurice. 

“ Oh, yes ; of Andromeda way out on a rock in 
the ocean,” cried Del, enthusiastically, “with a 
horrid big sea-monster opening his jaws at her. 


SCHOOL, 


6l 


And oh ! there’s a flying hero coming right down 
on him through the air. We’ll play that when 
we’re in bathing, Eric.” 

“What’s my book.^” asked Dolo, sharply. 

“Yours.? Oh, yes!” responded Del, cuddling 
her own against her cheek and then laying it ten- 
derly down by her side. “Now let me see. I 
always was a good guesser. Here’s a stupid big 
book on Political Economy. Take it, Nat. It’s 
all full of columns of ugly figures — just what you 
like. And ah, oh I here’s Hans Christian Ander- 
sen’s Fairy-Tales. How nice it looks ! Isn’t 
, that for me, too. Uncle Maurice.?” 

“Not much,” laughed Eric; “that’s for one of 
the kids.” 

“Del always expects the lion’s share,” said 
Dolo. 

“As if a tawny mane made a lion!” observed 
Nat, quietly, casting a glance from the pages of 
his new book upon the red gold of Del’s rippling 
tresses. 

“Oh, it must be for Baby Merry!” cried Del, 
unheeding these various comments. “What fun 
we shall have ! Nick will read her the stories, as 
solemn as a small minister, and then she will tell 
them all over again to herself in her own funny 
little way. And here’s a book for Nick — Outline 
Maps. Now we shall have Europe and Asia 


62 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


drawn all over the sand, and we can travel in for- 
eign countries without once going off Hermit 
Island.” 

“But give me mine,” insisted Dolo, with a dan- 
gerous gleam in her black eyes. 

“Well, take your choice,” replied Del, holding 
out a shapely red-bound book in one hand and a 
stubby, mottled little volume in the other ; “ here 
is Darwin on Earth-Worms "and here is Sir John 
Mandeville’s Travels. Which’ll you have.^” 

“She won’t have Sir John,” exclaimed Eric, 
leaping upon the prize with a whoop of triumph ; 
“the books of travel are for your Uncle Tommy 
every time.” 

“Really, Eric,” remarked Del, demurely, “your 
behavior would disgrace a porpoise. But what I 
want to know is, why Uncle Maurice should give 
Dolo a book about worms — dirty, wriggly, nasty 
angle-worms ! ” And Del wrinkled up her pretty 
nose with an expression of supreme disgust. 

But Dolo looked up into her master’s eyes, 
smiling brightly, and Uncle Maurice smiled back. 

“My book isn’t lies,” said Dolo. 

“Neither is mine,” protested Nat. 

“Nor mine,” chimed in Eric. 

“I don’t think mine is, really and truly. Is it. 
Uncle Maurice?” pleaded Del. 

“Well, we will see,” said the master. “Take 


SCHOOL. 


63 


Nat’s book, for instance. Nat’s book is made up 
of so-called facts, selected and grouped, and of 
conclusions drawn from these facts. Now if the 
observation of the author was accurate, if his 
sources of information were reliable, if the selec- 
tion is representative and the grouping fair, then 
there is a chance that the conclusions may in 
some degree stand for the truth, though even 
then, my son, you must make due allowance for 
the writer’s personal stand-point — his heredity, 
training, social prejudice, intellectual limit and 
the object he has in view.” 

“Sorry for you, Nat,” observed Eric, cheerfully. 
“Isn’t my book truer than that, papa.^” 

“Let me see,” said the father, and, reaching 
out his hand for Eric’s volume, he turned the 
leaves for a moment and then read aloud a few 
passages, chosen almost at random — 

“ ' And in that isle there is a great wonder, for 
all kinds of fish that are in the sea come once a 
year, one kind after the other, to the coast of that 
isle in so great a multitude that a man can see 
hardly anything but fish ; and there they remain 
three days ; and every man of the country takes 
as many of them as he likes. And that kind of 
fish, after the third day, departs and goes into the 
sea. And after them come another multitude of 
fish of another kind, and do in the same manner 


64 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


as the first did another three days; and so on 
with the other kinds, till all the divers kinds of 
fishes have been there, and men have taken what 
they like of them. And no man knows the 
cause ; but they of the country say that it is to do 
reverence to their king, who is the most worthy 
king in the world, and that is best beloved of 
God, as they say. There are also in that country 
a kind of snails, so great that many persons may 
lodge in their shells, as men would do in a little 
house. . . . After that isle, men go by the 

Sea of Ocean, by many isles, to a great and fair 
isle called Nacumera, which is in circuit more 
than a thousand miles. And all the men and 
women of that isle have dogs’ heads. Hence 
men go to another isle called Silha, which is full 
eight hundred miles in circuit. ... In that 
isle is a great mountain, in the midst of which is 
a large lake in a full, fair plain, and there is great 
plenty of water. And they of the country say 
that Adam and Eve wept on that mount a hun- 
dred years, when they were driven out of Para- 
dise. And the water, they say, is of their tears ; 
for so much water they wept, that made the afore- 
said lake. And at the bottom of that lake are 
found many precious stones and great pearls. 

. . . And the king of that country, once every 

year, gives leave to poor men to go into the lake to 


SCHOOL. 


65 


gather precious stones and pearls, by way of alms, 
for the love of God, that made Adam. 

In one of these isles are people of great stat- 
ure, like giants, hideous to look upon ; and they 
have but one eye, which is in the middle of the 
forehead ; and they eat nothing but raw flesh and 
fish. And in another isle toward the south, dwell 
people of foul stature and cursed nature, who have 
no heads, but their eyes are in their shoulders. 
In another isle are people who have the face all 
flat, without nose and without mouth. In another 
isle are people that have the lip above the mouth 
so great, that when they sleep in the sun they 
cover all the face with that lip. And in another 
isle ” — 

But Eric could restrain himself no longer. 
^^Jeminy Crackets ! ” he exclaimed; “but if that 
don’t beat our island all hollow! Jingo! What 
yarns ! ” 

“What do you think of your old book now.-^” 
asked Del, disdainfully. 

“Want to swap.?” suggested Nat, holding up 
his bulky volume with a look of restored respect. 

“It sounds like Cap’n Noll,” was Dolo’s sen- 
tentious criticism. 

“ If you were all boys. I’d tell you all to shut 
up,” responded Eric, stoutly, but lifting puzzled 
eyes to his father’s face. 


66 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Don’t lose faith in your book, my boy,”, said 
Mr. Yorke, in answer to the eyes. “It was 
written in the old, old times, when wisdom went 
by hearsay, and even in later days many’s the 
honest man who has been gulled. By the time 
you have read the book and are ready to tell us 
about it, you will understand better how, in spite 
of the marvels, it sprang from one of the most 
candid and truth-loving hearts God ever made.” 

“ Oh, are we going to teach each other our 
books asked Del, “just as we did last time.?” 

“Yes,” said the master. “How can we help 
it .? By next Monday I expect you’ll be so brim- 
ming over with Greek mythology that we shall 
have to let you talk to us about it the morning 
long, until we are all eager to get hold of your 
new book, too. And by Wednesday Eric will 
have to tell us about Sir John Mandeville’s adven- 
tures, or” — 

“Or burst,” suggested Nat. 

“And by the week after,” continued Mr Yorke, 
“Nat will feel it borne in upon him that he must 
enlighten our minds on economic questions, and 
Dolo” — 

“Will have a menagerie of wretched little 
worms all ready for exhibition,” concluded Del. 

“As if everybody didn’t know everything about 
worms already ! ” observed Eric, with a lofty air. 


SCHOOL. 


67 


his temper not yet entirely recovered from the 
onslaught upon his book. ‘‘Useless things ! ” 
“Since you are so wise in regard to these 
useless things, suppose you instruct us a little,” 
suggested his father, quietly. “Are worms ter- 
restrial animals or aquatic ” 

“Why, worms are — worms,” replied Eric, in 
some embarrassment. 

“Terrestrial, of course,” volunteered Nat, who 
was of a logical turn of mind ; “we call ’em earth- 
worms, not water-worms. ” 

“ Yet if you should keep one in the dry air of a 
room for a single day, it would die,” said Mr. 
Yorke, “while it would live for three or four 
months in a bowl of water.” 

“Let’s try it and see,” proposed Dolo. 

“Don’t you believe my father demanded Nat, 
with one of his sudden flashes of anger. 

“He doesn’t want me to,” replied Dolo, calmly; 
“he would rather have me try and see.” 

Mr. Yorke smiled assent. Then he turned 
again to Eric and resumed his catechism. 

“ How do worms breathe ? ” 

“Through their noses,’’ replied Eric, recklessly. 
“Pooh!” said Del, “a worm’s not of enough 
account to have a nose.” 

“Oh, don’t be too hard on your fellow-mortals,” 
protested Nat, who had loyally gone over to the 


68 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


side his father seemed to be espousing; “a worm 
has some dignity of its own, after all. A trodden 
worm will turn.” 

“Didn’t say it wouldn’t,” retorted Del; “I only 
said it wouldn’t turn up its nose, and it won’t, 
because it hasn’t any. So there ! ” 

“They breathe by their skins,” announced Dolo, 

who had availed herself of this interval to search 

/ 

her book for the answer. “ Oh ! and they see by 
their skins, too. They haven’t any eyes or ears, 
but they’ll crawl into their holes, if you bring a 
candle, and they’ll run away, if you play on the 
piano. Aren’t they interesting ” 

“Pshaw!” growled Eric; “worms interesting!” 

“Why do they pave the little chambers at the 
bottom of their burrows with bits of stone and 
with seeds and rose-thorns ” began Mr. Yorke, 
again. 

“Didn’t know they did,” said Eric, indifferently. 

“And why do they coat the upper part of their 
burrows with leaves.?” pursued the questioner. 

“Do they, though.?” returned Eric, with lan- 
guid interest. 

“Why do they plug up the mouths of their bur- 
rows with sticks and stones .? ” continued Mr. 
Yorke, a twinkle. in his eye disputing the gravity 
about his mouth. 

“Seems cozy, maybe,” hazarded Eric. 


SCHOOL. 


69 


“Why do they keep their tails fixed in their 
burrows when they walk out to take the air?” 

“Oh, come off! You’re fooling,” exclaimed 
Eric. “I’m going to look the very next chance I 
get and see if they do.” 

“Well said. Now answer me one more ques- 
tion. When the worms burrow holes, what do 
they do with the earth ?” 

“Swallow it, I reckon,” said Eric, growing 
desperate. 

“ Right, my son,” replied his father, to Eric’s 
undisguised astonishment ; “sometimes they push 
it away, but more often they swallow it.” 

“Every worm his own wheel-barrow,” mur- 
mured Nat. 

“They swallow earth in large quantities,” con- 
tinued Mr. Yorke; “and also bits of stone, grains 
of sand, and sharp fragments of brick and tile.” 

“What for?” asked Eric, his eyes shining at 
last. 

“Ah! Now the questioning is on the right 
side,” said the teacher, smiling the well-pleased 
smile the scholars loved. “These hard, angular 
fragments are to aid their busy gizzards in crush- 
ing and grinding the earth, for it is estimated 
that in many parts of England on every acre of 
land a weight of more than ten tons of earth 
annually passes through the bodies of worms 


70 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


and is brought to the surface, so that the whole 
superficial bed of vegetable mould is ploughed 
and sifted by them for us in the course of a few 
years. They are the friends of the archaeologists, 
too, preserving old walls and pavements by bury- 
ing them with mould and thus protecting them 
from decay. These faithful little laborers pre- 
pare our soil for vegetation, keep our lawns 
smooth and beautiful, and in fact, carry on a large 
share of the work of the world and play an 
important part in its history.” 

'‘And you call them useless things, Eric !” said 
Del, as reproachfully as if she had been the most 
ardent champion of worms from the beginning. 

In the face of this roundabout desertion, poor 
Eric was unable to hold his ground. 

“I’ll take it back,” he said, meekly; “I always 
liked ’em pretty well for bait, and now” — 

“Now we ought to give them nothing short of 
the right of suffrage, in return for their valuable 
services. They’re better adapted to political polls 
than fish-poles,” remarked Nat, with an expression 
of such peculiar gravity it was made manifest that 
he was jesting. Eric groaned, but Del laughed 
out, adding with girlish condescension — 

“You’re a queer boy, Nat. You’re so absent- 
minded and bookish and all, and yet beneath it 
you do have a sort of dry wit of your own.” 


SCHOOL. 


71 


‘‘Dry!” muttered Eric; “I should think so. 
Chestnuts I ” 

“What would become of this island,” retorted 
Nat, “if we didn't have that fellow to fool around 
over on the coast, once a week, and pick up in 
the streets — while Rob and I are buying gro- 
ceries and attending to our business like respect- 
able citizens — all the slang of the nineteenth 
century ? ” 

■Mr. Yorke would have suffered the young peo- 
ple’s banter to run on until noon, but Dolo cut 
short this irrelevant discussion by one of her crisp 
remarks — 

“I like my book. Uncle Maurice. I’ll study it 
hard and dig up some worms of my own and try 
its experiments all over on them. Then I can tell 
you about worms for sure, week after next.” 

“Give us a corrected edition of Darwin, eh.?” 
asked Nat. “I’ll help you dig. It’s getting to 
be quite an honorable distinction to be a ‘poor 
worm of the dust ’. Del’s gods and goddesses are 
nowhere now.” 

Del pouted and pulled beseechingly, with one 
of her childish, winsome gestures, at Uncle Mau- 
rice’s sleeve. 

“ Please tell how my book is true,” she pleaded. 

Uncle Maurice slowly leaned back in his chair, 
turning his head so as the better to watch the 


72 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


white clouds drifting across the azure background 
of the summer sky. 

“We have a poet who once wrote — 

‘“Through pastures blue the flocks of God go trooping one by 
one, 

And turn their golden fleeces round to dry them in the sun.’ 

“Is that true or false.?” he, asked. 

And the boys and girls, following his gaze, 
answered with one voice — “True.” 

“What is the Greek name of the sun-god.?” 
asked the master, after a moment’s silence. 

“Apollo,” replied Del. 

“Phoebus,” replied Nat. 

“Both right,” said the master. “One of these 
days, when you are all coaxing to have me teach 
you the most beautiful language ever spoken by 
mortal lips, I will show you how it comes to pass 
that the word Apollo means Destroyer. Yes, the 
golden arrows of the keen-eyed Archer sometimes 
smite mortals with black death. Look at this 
photograph of Niobe, clasping her last little 
daughter to her heart. The Archer-God, proud 
and swift to wrath, has slain with seven bright 
arrows her seven beautiful sons, and his sister, the 
Moon-Goddess — 


‘“Queen and Huntress chaste and fair’ — 


SCHOOL. 


73 


having pierced with her silver arrows six of the 
seven daughters, is already raising her bow of 
pearl to rob the grief-distracted mother of her 
last. But we love the sun better when he is not 
the pitiless Apollo, but Phoebus, the Shining One, 
the divine Poet, who floods the listening sky with 
ethereal music that only earth’s highest mountain- 
tops may catch, those Parnassus peaks which mor- 
tal singers climb with bleeding feet to drink in the 
enchantment of his song. And Phoebus is the 
bright-robed Shepherd, too, whose white flocks 
wander softly through the violet fields of heaven. 
Del’s book tells us all this and it tells us the story 
of how once upon a time a mischievous child stole 
away Apollo’s herds, for the Greeks thought of 
their stately southern cumuli as herds of white 
heifers rather than sheep. And the story is true, 
isn’t it.? Listen.” 

But the boys and girls, listening, heard above 
the monotony of the sea nothing save the whis- 
tling of the wind. 

Mr. Yorke quoted again — 

“ ‘ The babe was born at the first peep of day ; 

He began playing on the lyre at noon, 

And that same evening did he steal away 
Apollo’s herds.’ 


“ Who is it ? 


74 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Mr. Yorke fixed his glance, inquiring, inspiring, 
upon Dolo, who was the skeptic among his pupils 
as regarded the truth of poetry. 

Dole’s dark eyes suddenly kindled and she 
looked up into the master’s face with her rare, 
transfctrming smile. 

“The wind! It’s the wind!” she exclaimed. 
“It is so little at first, and grows to be a great 
wind so fast, and it makes a music, too, and some- 
times blows the clouds away.” 

“Right!” said Mr. Yorke, with an accent that 
made the happy color mount into Dolo’s cheeks. 

“Thank you. Do,” said Del, gaily; “you’re the 
one who said my book was lies, and you’re the 
one to make it truth. I’ll call it even.” 

“What was the classic name for the wind.?” 
asked Nat. 

Mr. Yorke sighed. 

“Does any one remember what mei'x means in 
Latin .? ” he asked. 

Apparently no one did, and it required a mo- 
ment or two of patient work with English deriva- 
tives before Mr. Yorke could bring his little class 
to see that the word signified merchandise. 

“I like to hear Uncle Maurice open a word,” 
said Dolo. 

“So do I,” said Eric; “he cracks it like a 
nut.” 


SCHOOL. 


75 


Peels it like an onion, you’d better say,” cor- 
rected Nat. 

^‘No, no; he unfolds it like a rosebud,” pro- 
tested Del. 

“But notice, my children,” said the master. 
“The Greek name of the wind-god is Hermes, 
which means interpreter ; for to the sensitive soul 
of the Greek the whispers of the wind were mes- 
sages from Heaven. But the Romans — material- 
minded, blind of heart — knew Hermes by the 
name of Mercury, because they saw in the wind 
only an agent to fill the sails of their ships and 
advance their selfish commerce. But woe to the 
nation, woe to the man that craves no other celes- 
tial greeting than the assurance of external pros- 
perity ! What can the Olympians give to those 
who turn their grace to degradation .? And speak- 
ing of the Romans,” added Mr. Yorke, presently, 
in a lighter tone, “what a long time it is since 
we have had an hour with our old friend, Vir- 
gil ! Where were we .^ ” 

“At the beginning of the fifth book,” replied 
Nat, promptly, while Eric dived under the couch 
for the disreputable little pile of grammars and 
yEneids, all tattered and torn, which looked as if 
they had seen active service as ammunition 
against the giant. Ignorance. 

So the boys and girls gathered still closer about 


76 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


the master, while he, reading the Latin, translating 
and commenting, carried them smoothly over the 
first one hundred lines. Then the questions grew 
more frequent and one after another the scholars 
found themselves quite naturally taking up the 
reading or translation, until at last, when they had 
reached the most exciting crisis of the boat-race, 
Mr. Yorke withdrew his help altogether and left 
the eager young intelligences to push on through 
the story as best they might without him. Mean- 
while, Nick had wandered back with a long cinna- 
mon stick in his hand, which his father, coaxing 
from him and breaking into bits, used as the 
material for a lesson on the table of sixes, 
Nick devouring the fragments as he advanced in 
knowledge. 

As the last brittle morsel of all disappeared 
between the childish lips, a dinner-bell was rung 
below stairs, and the school, amid many excla- 
mations of surprise and regret, broke up without 
ceremony. 

“What shall we have to-morrow ” asked Nat. 
“History.?” 

“ Geography ! ” shouted Eric. 

“No. Shakespeare!” pleaded Del. 

“ Seaweeds ! ” urged Dolo. 

“A holiday,” pronounced Mr. Yorke. And his 
wife, overhearing him, sighed impatiently and said 


SCHOOL. 


77 


in fretful tofies to Robert, who, flushed and tired, 
was just in from the hayfield — “You boys will 
p;row up in utter ignorance. I don’t see what 
your father is thinking of. No good can possibly 
come of such helter-skelter work.” 


CHAPTER IV. 


FORTUNE-TELLING. 


Jesters do oft prove prophets.— William Shakespeare. 



HY don’t you ever go into the surf, Miss 


VV Lucas asked Del, gaily, as she ran 
through the house an hour after dinner in her 
bathing suit — a monastic-looking costume made 
over from one of the gray flannel frocks. 

Miss Lucas slowly lifted her glance from the 
basket of mending with which she was busied. 

“It never occurred to me,” she answered. 

Del’s blue eyes peeped at her wistfully from 
under their long brown lashes. It was so essen- 
tially the nature of the child to let her love over- 
flow freely on all with whom she came in contact, 
that she suffered more than she herself realized 
from the repression of her home affections. Her 
father rebuffed every approach ; Dolo, when she 
was not freakishly tormenting, was silent and 
strange, and Miss Lucas seemed to be enfolded 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


79 


in a mantle of never melting ice. Something in 
the housekeeper’s quiet reply impressed Del as 
pathetic, and she longed to throw her warm young 
arms about the passive form and to kiss a flash of 
color into the unchanging face. But now, as 
always, an invisible barrier held her back, and 
with an incoherent phrase or two of expostulation, 
the girl ran on toward the beach. Miss Lucas 
did not look after her, nor out upon the gleaming- 
sea, but slowly bent her head again over the bas- 
ket of mending. 

Eric, also in bathing costume, was frisking 
about upon the shore, waiting for Del. Her first 
appearance on the top of the bluff was the signal 
for him to dive into the surf and set about a dis- 
play of acrobatic feats, which he performed 
equally to Del’s admiration and his own, until a 
peculiarly energetic billow, perhaps that 

“ . . . great third wave 

That never a swimmer shall cross or climb,’' 


Struck him at precisely the wrong angle, tipping 
the vain-glorious athlete upside down and spin- 
ning him about on his head in the sand, so that 
there was left visible to Del’s astonished eyes 
only a pair of sturdy brown legs kicking furiously 
in the air. After this exploit, Eric was suffi- 


8o 


HEUMIT ISLAND. 


ciently crest-fallen to be very good company, and 
Del waded out to join him. They danced up and 
down together, chased and splashed each other, 
ventured into too deep water, were knocked off 
their feet by a heavy wave, had an instant of 
struggle and dismay, were rolled back into the 
shallows by the indulgent tide, scrambled out, 
coughing and spluttering, upon the beach, where 
they lay meekly down and let the surf break over 
them, struck out for deep water once more, 
because Eric’s toe had been bitten by a crab — 
scampered in again, because Del had trodden on 
an eel, sang, laughed, shouted and disported them- 
selves in general like the frolicsome young creat- 
ures that they were. The gray old ocean seemed 
in no wise affronted at being thus taken for a 
gigantic playfellow, but smoothed his rough man- 
ners as best he knew, and, however loudly he 
might roar as he charged upon them, or however 
fiercely he might shake his hoary locks, proved 
that his terrible plunges were all in sport by the 
gentleness with which he would catch the frail 
bodies in his strong embrace and toss them 
lightly up and down upon the pulses of his 
mighty heart. 

Dolo was bathing, also, but further up the 
beach and alone. She had a plank with her and 
was teaching herself to swim. After a time, she 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


8l 


let her plank float free and waded over toward 
Del. There was a bar of sand some little dis- 
tance out, upon which Del was crouching, her 
loosened mass of golden-red hair clinging about 
her and her attitude expressive of mortal terror. 
There seemed to be, however, no adequately 
exciting cause for this emotion either in the 
waves that occasionally dashed over the bar or in 
the innocent flock of sand-peeps that was flying 
by. Eric, his comely face glowing with exercise, 
was splashing along toward Del from the shore, 
flourishing his sleeveless arms about his head in 
a manner startling to behold. 

“Oh, Dolo ! ” cried Del, catching sight of her 
sister, “ I’m Andromeda and Eric’s Perseus. I’m 
chained to this rock in the ocean -to be devoured 
by a horrible sea-monster and Perseus has wings 
so that he can fly out and rescue me. But the 
trouble is, we haven’t anything nice for a mon- 
ster. Won’t you be the monster, Dolo dear — 
please, just for once.^ And Perseus will slay you 
and fall in love with me.” 

Dolo shrugged her left shoulder with unwonted 
emphasis. 

“No, thank you,” she replied, as dryly as could 
be expected of a girl standing in a dripping 
bathing-suit waist-deep in the Atlantic; “but I’ll 
be Andromeda, if you’ll be the monster.” 


82 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Oh, but” — began Del, in a tone of remon- 
strance, glancing from her own shining tresses 
to Dolo’s closely-coiled black braid; “don’t you 
think that I — that I ” — 

Dolo laughed her short little laugh and waded 
back to shore, leaving Perseus to perform miracles 
of valor upon the skeleton of a skate, that had 
been conveniently washed up on the bar, while 
Andromeda, with something between a pout and a 
quiver of the lip, surveyed the contest. It was 
well for Dolo that she had declined the role of 
monster, for Perseus, armed with a big pebble, 
pounded the skeleton almost into annihilation. 

“Ann Dromedary, you are free,” said her deliv- 
erer, grandiloquently, his ear for classic names 
being scarcely equal to his destructive genius, and 
spurning the bony fragments of the skate into the 
sea, he flapped his arms aloft and perched upon 
one foot in an attitude truly suggestive of a 
winged hero taking flight. 

But it is in the nature of delivered maidens to 
be ungrateful and Andromeda, yawning a little, 
called back — 

“This is getting stupid, Eric. Let’s do some- 
thing else.” 

“What else.?” asked Eric, dropping his arms 
and his uplifted foot with unabated cheerfulness. 

“ Bring me an armful of the very brightest sea- 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


83 


weeds you can find and I’ll show you,” replied 
Del. 

In a few moments Eric was standing before 
her, his arms heaped high with masses of lustrous 
brown and vivid green seaweed. Selecting the 
most brilliant strips, Del wound them about her 
waist and trailed them over her shoulders, until 
she bore, at least in Eric’s eyes, a striking resem- 
blance to a mermaid. 

“Now get me a good big shell,” she com- 
manded, “and I’ll tell your fortune.” 

Eric groped about under the waves and brought 
back the largest snail-shell he could find. It did 
not altogether satisfy the sibyl, but she smiled 
graciously on her servitor and placed it against 
her ear. 

“ I hear the rolling of waves and the rolling of 
waves and the rolling of waves,” she announced, 
solemnly ; “ that means you are to be a sailor and 
always live on the ocean.” 

Eric nodded, well content, and threw himself 
down upon the sand at Del’s feet, heedless of the 
surf that every now and then splashed over him. 

It was a singularly charming picture that they 
made, the fair-faced little maiden, her dripping 
garments nearly concealed by the sun-glorified 
abundance of her fallen hair, and by the fantastic 
draperies of seaweed, and at her feet, the slender 


84 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


boy, graceful in all his postures and movements, 
and with a delicacy of outline and coloring rarely 
seen in a lad so hardily bred. 

truly mean to be a sailor, when I’m a man,” 
said Eric, a look new even to Del — a longing, 
steadfast look shining through all the fun and 
sparkle of his ever-mischievous blue eyes ; “ I 
should love to sail on the ocean always. There is 
nothing I want so much as that. I don’t believe 
I could stand it to live inland, out of sight and 
sound of the sea. For my part. I’m glad our 
home is on the island. Mother cries about it and 
Nat says he’s going away, but I like it^ and so 
does father.” 

“Does Robert like it.^*” asked Del, tickling 
Eric’s ear with a wet bit of seaweed. 

Eric made a snatch and captured the seaweed 
before he answered the question. 

“ Rob ? Oh, I don’t know. Rob’s so close- 
mouthed, you never can tell what he likes or what 
he doesn’t. He talks, too,” added Eric, reflect- 
ively, “but somehow he doesn’t tell you much 
about himself. He’s a pretty good sort of fellow, 
Rob is.” 

“It’s easy for some people to be good,” said 
the mermaid, with a very human little sigh. 

“Then let’s leave it all to them,” was Eric’s 
prompt response. 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


85 


After this, conversation flagged. Del hummed 
sailor-songs and Eric whistled the accompani- 
ments. By and by they began to feel chilly and 
resumed their frolics in the water; but suddenly 
Eric sprang upright and shaded his eyes with his 
hand. 

“Hello! There’s Cap’n Noll going out to look 
at his lobster-pots,” exclaimed the boy. “Won- 
der if he’ll wait for me to change my rig. Ahoy, 
Cap’n I Ahoy, I say I Want to come, Del ? ” 

“No,” replied Del, with decision; “not in that 
dirty old fishing-dory. Run along fast, or Cap’n 
Noll won’t wait.” 

But the captain did wait, for he had an espe- 
cial kindness for Eric and loved to talk with the 
bright-faced lad about the sailor-life. On this 
occasion, as they were pulling homeward, two 
hours later, with the boat well laden, the captain, 
dropping the boastful tone in which he had been 
relating some incredible adventure of his upon an 
Arctic icefloe, reverted to his favorite theme. 

“ Ay, ay, my boy. I want you to sail the seas. 
There’s no life like it. It makes a man brave 
and generous and God-fearing. ’Tis in the reason 
of things that it must. A sailor can’t face wind 
and weather, year in, year out, climbing the icy 
riggin’ on pitch-dark nights, with the vessel reel- 
ing like mad beneath him — he can’t listen to the 


86 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


grinding o’ the icebergs through the dark or hear 
the hiss o’ the waves when they show their white 
teeth to the storm rolling up from the horizon, 
and come out of it at last a coward. No, no ; and 
the ocean takes the petty stuff out o’ human 
nater, too. A man with all the wideness of sea 
and sky spread about him ain’t going to cut down 
his soul to the measure of a dollar-bill. And as 
for religion — well! if there’s any church as holy 
as the blue mid-ocean or any argyment as down- 
right convincin’ as a genuine Nor’-easter, I’d like 
to know it. A sailor may be a scoundr^el as well 
as a landsman, but at any rate he knows he’s a 
scoundrel. He may break all o’ God’s command- 
ments his first twenty-four hours on shore, but 
he’ll not be drunk enough then to tell you there’s 
no God with commandments to break. Sail the 
seas, my boy. It’s rough an’ it’s lonesome an’ it’s 
fearsome at times, but there’s no life like it.” 

And the old captain turned his big body in the 
dory, and, relaxing his grip on the tiller, stared 
out over the rolling waters with a vague, far-away 
gaze, while Eric, shipping his oars, leaned for- 
ward and looked also, his eyes so bright with 
eager desire that a beholder might well have put 
faith in the prophetic powers of the little fortune- 
teller, who had read the boy his destiny from the 
sea-resounding shell. 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


87 


Meanwhile the sibyl was feeling inclined to 
practice this new profession farther. It appeared 
to Del that it would be much better fun to tell 
other people’s fortunes that afternoon than to 
live out her own, and so, hurrying back to the 
house and escaping from the drenched bathing- 
suit into her customary clothing, she clambered 
up to the narrow attic and proceeded to select 
certain embellishments for her dress from a large 
trunk of discarded finery. It was from this same 
trunk that the pink sash had come. Turning 
over the contents with a light, yet lingering 
touch, Del chose a kerchief of faded saffron, 
which she tied about her head, a long window 
curtain, figured in blue and buff, of fine fabric, 
but hopelessly torn, which she wound about her 
body, pinning it securely with four large blue 
rosettes, and last of all a pair of old satin slip- 
pers, once yellow, into which she pushed with 
delight her little bare brown feet. 

As the girl, looking more like a gypsy than 
ever in this novel array, was slipping noiselessly 
out of the house, so as not to disturb her father, 
who might possibly be closeted in his study, she 
encountered Miss Lucas. The housekeeper sur- 
veyed her without surprise or curiosity or reproof. 
Del dropped a merry little courtesy. 

Shall I tell you your fortune, Miss Lucas ? ” 


88 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The woman looked at her with that habitual 
dull gaze for a moment and then a sudden tremor 
passed across her eyelids and her lips. 

“My fortune was told ten years ago,” she 
answered, and mechanically adjusting a disordered 
fold of the saffron kerchief, moved quietly away. 

To meet Miss Lucas had caused Del no con- 
cern. The housekeeper rarely interfered with her 
goings and comings, and, so far as her costume 
was concerned, the girl supposed that she was the 
only person in the house who took the slightest 
interest in the moth-eaten contents of this old 
trunk, which Miss Lucas designated as rubbish 
and which Dolo refused to touch. As for Mr. 
Rexford, Del doubted whether he knew of the 
existence even of the attic, much less of the 
trunk and its miscellaneous collection of bygone 
braveries. But he had sometimes rebuked her 
sharply for her overflow of high spirits, and it was 
not without a start of dismay that Del, as she 
turned the corner of the house, came abruptly 
upon her father. 

“Oh!” she exclaimed, before she could check 
herself. 

Mr. Rexford, who had apparently stepped out 
from his study to recapture from the thievish 
wind some slips of paper closely covered over 
with mathematical computations, faced sternly 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


round upon her, but as his swift glance swept her 
costume from crown to toe, an expression of keen- 
est pain contorted his features. 

“You look too much like your mother,” he said 
vehemently, almost fiercely. “You are too much 
like your mother. Why are you tricked out in 
this fashion ? What do you want ? Have you 
found fools and flatterers in this waste fragment 
of space already ? ” 

“Father!” exclaimed Del, in utter amazement. 
Stern and harsh as he was, she had never heard 
this ring of bitterness in his tone before, nor seen 
so strange an irony flash from his dark eyes. 

Mr. Rexford bit his lip and changed his tone. 

“There, there!” he said, more kindly than 
usual; “never mind. You startled me. But 
don’t stand staring in that rude fashion. Go 
wherever you were going and quickly. The 
sooner you tear those fripperies to pieces on the 
bushes the better.” 

Del availed herself promptly of this ungracious 
permission, and, catching off the satin slippers, 
tender with time, that she might run the faster, 
sped away like a young fawn over the sandy foot- 
path that led toward the Yorke farm. 

But as she ran her eyes were full of indignation 
and perplexity and grief. What was it that her 
strange, moody, irritable father had said about her 


90 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


mother, that fair-haired, violet-eyed young mother, 
the angel of her dreams ? It was seven years ago 
that she had died, but Del remembered her well 
and could still feel at night, as she lay between 
sleeping and waking, the light, caressing touch 
upon her hair — -could still hear the sudden rain 
of tears upon her pillow. It had been Del’s pride 
and joy to compare her own face in the glass 
with a card-photograph of her mother which an 
old nurse had given her at the time when, a 
few days after the funeral, the unknown father 
appeared, dismissed the servants and carried his 
daughters away from their pleasant city home to 
this solitary island. Del had studied the two 
faces, the one in the little cracked mirror, childish, 
sunburned and blithesome, the other on the worn 
slip of card — womanly, wan and sorrowful — until 
she knew with certain knowledge that the resem- 
blance between the two in outline and feature was 
almost perfect. This had been her cherished 
secret. She had not confided it to Dolo, not only 
because the sisters had so little life in common, 
but because Del feared, with sympathetic delicacy, 
that Dolo would be stung with the sense of her 
own unlikeness to that sainted mother, whose 
memory was a religion with them both. And 
there was no one else on the island — for seven 
years past all her world — who had ever seen her 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


91 


mother, except her father and possibly the old 
Hermit, neither of these being accessible, in the 
way of conversation, to poor little Del. She had 
kept hidden away in the inmost recesses of her 
heart, however, a shy, dreamlike hope that some 
day her father would look at her with a more 
attentive gaze than the short, indifferent or dis- 
pleased glance which was all he ordinarily vouch- 
safed to either of his children, and would then, 
startled by the look of her mother in her face, 
soften toward her — smile upon her, perhaps, and 
reach out his arms, or even bend his head, white 
with those untimely snows, and kiss her. For 
Del felt the yearnings of a blind, wistful pity 
toward this unfatherly father of hers and longed 
for permission to love and comfort him. Dolo, 
on the contrary, regarded him with suspicion and 
anger, and, in proportion as she idolized the re- 
membrance of her mother, hated the father whom 
she believed in some way responsible for the many 
hours that young mother had passed weeping bit- 
terly upon her knees. Dole’s dark little head nest- 
led against her shoulder; for if Del joyed in the 
assurance that she was her mother’s breathing 
image, Dolo, too, had her consoling secret, in the 
belief that she had been of the two children the 
one more dearly beloved. If Del could not recall, 
in her recollection of those swift days of child- 


92 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


hood, a moment’s lack of tenderest affection and 
care, Dolo remembered with vivid distinctness 
times when her mother, catching her up and press- 
ing her close against the breast in a passionate 
overflow of love, would cover the dark, strange 
little face with tears and kisses, clasping her with 
a force that hurt the child, and then, lost in 
thought, would sit, still straining the patient lit- 
tle form to her bosom, until Dolo’s limbs were 
cramped and stiff and her baby heart big with 
wonder and distress. If Mr. Rexford had spoken 
to Dolo of her mother, as he had just now spoken 
to Del, the black eyes would have flashed respons- 
ive fire into his ; but Del was more hurt than 
resentful and more disappointed and bewildered 
than either. Her father had seen the likeness, 
but had rebuked and scorned her for it. What 
did he mean.? What could he mean.? For if it 
were not good to look like the beautiful young 
mother who had been in Heaven so long, what on 
the earth was good and what was worth desiring .? 
Del’s eyes were still tear-misted, as she turned 
into the sandy field where Robert Yorke was 
working diligently to gather in the scanty crop of 
hay. Nathan had just thrown down his rake and 
was awkwardly twisting his long arms into his 
jacket-sleeves. 

Sorry to leave you in the lurch, Rob,” he 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


93 


called; ‘‘but it’s time for Calculus, and I don’t 
dare keep Pepperpot waiting.” 

“Hush! There’s Del,” said Robert, quickly. 

Del was too near not to have overheard both 
remarks, but she came up smiling, though her 
cheeks were still flushed and tear-stained, and sit- 
ting down on a low hay-cock, fitted her little feet 
again into the old satin slippers. 

Nathan, turning an unbecoming crimson ovor 
face and ears and neck, caught his foot in the 
rake and executed a surprising gambol to save 
himself from falling. 

“I — I beg your pardon, Del,” he stammered; 
*‘rm always bound to make an ass of myself, but 
nobody knows better than I what a help these 
lessons are to me, and I appreciate your father’s 
kindness and patience — well, yes; hem! — that 
is, when he is patient — I mean that — no matter 
if — that is to say” — 

“Oh, hold up, there!” laughed Rob; “Mr. Rex- 
ford must be patient, patient as Job, to spend his 
time over such a tongue-crooked fellow as you. 
Nat appreciates it down under, Del, if he can’t 
get it to the surface. The milk is all right, only 
it’s hard churning. We always have to wait for 
Nat’s ideas to come to butter.” 

Del laughed. “I think father likes to teach 
Nat,” she said; “he’s more particular about that 


94 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


appointment than anything else in the day. And 
as for time,” she added, a little mournfully, ^‘I 
should think father had time enough. He doesn’t 
do anything from morning to night but walk 
about the island, all alone, and cipher away there 
in his study.” 

“ Cipher ! ” exclaimed Nathan, contemptuously ; 
“he calculates eclipses and computes orbits and 
does no end of awfully difficult astronomical 
work! I tell you, he’s a master-hand at mathe- 
matics and no mistake about it.” 

“What’s the good of it all.!*” asked Robert, 
pausing to wipe his heated face. 

“What’s the good of all the writing your own 
father does ” demanded Del, flying to her par- 
ent’s defence with unexpected spirit. 

Robert took up his scythe again and fell to 
work with redoubled energy. 

“Father sells an article to a newspaper or a 
magazine once in a while,” he said. 

“And some day he means to publish a book,” 
added Nat, glancing at his brother uneasily. 

Del was perfectly satisfied with these replies, 
if the boys were not, and laid down her arms as 
suddenly as she had taken them up. 

“ Oh, if I were a magazine-man or a publisher, 
I would give Uncle Maurice a piece of gold for 
every word he writes ! ” she said, enthusiastically ; 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


95 


^‘but I can’t see how anybody can bear to work 
over columns of stupid figures all day or care any- 
thing for them after they are done. Do you 
really like Calculus, Nat?” 

Nat blinked in the sunshine and stared at her 
reflectively. 

<^Yes, I like it,” he answered, slowly, as if he 
were sinking his words, like plummets, into 
depths of hitherto unsounded thought; “and 
what’s more,” he added, abruptly, “I must cut 
and run, or I shall be late.” And the long-legged 
fellow, clapping his hand on a well-worn volume, 
bulky with papers, that protruded from his jacket 
pocket, started off on a grotesque trot. 

But Del had not been so absorbed in her 
trouble and perplexity as to fail to notice the 
boys’ disregard of her costume, and she called out 
after the runaway — 

“Wait, Nat! Look at my gypsy-dress. I’m a 
fortune-teller and I prophesy that father won’t 
give you any lesson this afternoon.” 

But at this dread prediction, Nathan’s long legs 
plied the air more energetically than before, and 
it was but a vague, unseeing glance he cast 
behind him. 

Robert, however, looked up from his mowing 
and surveyed the quaint little figure with a good- 
humored smile. 


96 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Well, well! you are tricked out this time, sure 
enough,” he commented; “that toggery must be 
hot, isn’t it? But it looks nice.” 

Del pouted. 

“I might as well dress up for two mackerel or 
even cunners as for you and Nat,” she said, dis- 
dainfully; “where’s Eric? He knows what is 
pretty, when he sees it. Oh, I remember. He’s 
out with Cap’n Noll. And he ought to be help- 
ing you. What a bad boy I ” 

“Why, what’s the matter with what I said?” 
demanded Robert, in surprise ; “ I think it’s an 
uncommonly jolly rig.” 

“It isn’t what you say, it’s what you don’t 
say,” returned Del, slightly mollified; “but see 
here, Rob! You’ve been at work all day and you 
look tired. Why didn’t you just make Eric help 
you this afternoon ? ” 

“ I suppose it would have been much better all 
around if I had,” returned Robert, mowing stead- 
ily; “but Eric is young yet and I hate to hold his 
nose to the grindstone, especially when it’s the 
only handsome nose in the family. It doesn’t 
look much like rain to-night and any way our hay 
is so salt that a little fresh water wouldn’t hurt it. 
And Eric — well! The youngster slipped off for 
his swim after dinner, and I haven’t set eyes on 
him since. So he’s out with Cap’n Noll. I 


FORTUNE -TELLING. 97 

guessed as much. He likes the sea better than 
the hayfield.” 

Del leaned back against the haycock and 
watched for a time in silence the rise and fall 
of the stalwart young shoulders and the regular 
swing of the scythe. 

‘'Seems to me everything comes on you, Rob,” 
she remarked, after a little. 

“Oh, no,” said Robert, smiling; “I don’t do the 
ironing or the baking or darn the stockings, and 
that last is a terrible job at our house, when it’s 
too cold to go barefoot.” 

“ Well, then, everything comes on you and your 
mother,” persisted Del. 

“Too much comes on poor mother, that’s a 
fact,” replied the young man, and if Robert Yorke 
had ever been known to sigh, Del would have 
been sure that she heard him sigh then. 

“It’s a weary world,” quoth Del, lugubriously, 
after a moment of sympathetic silence. But at 
that Robert laughed outright. 

“Might be worse,” he said, cheerily, and mowed 
so fast that Del, in order to maintain the conver- 
sation, was obliged to move to the next haycock. 

“What would you do if you should dig up a 
fortune on the island, Rob.?” Del asked. “Per- 
haps Captain Kidd buried some of his treasure 
here.” 


98 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Precious little cut-throat gold in this sandbank, 
I guess,” answered Robert, as good-naturedly as 
if he were not wishing in his heart that Del would 
remember how talking hindered him. “ If I turn 
up potatoes enough this summer to fill our six 
mouths, I shall be satisfied.” 

“No, but make believe,” coaxed Del. “What 
would you do ” 

“Well,” answered Rob, “I would bundle Nat 
off to collegd, for one thing. He has too many 
brains in his homely noddle to spend his life dig- 
ging clams and setting lobster-pots.” 

“Nat is homely, isn't he.^^” observed Del, in a 
musing tone. Robert cast a somewhat surprised 
glance upon her. 

“Why, yes,” he said; “why shouldn’t he be?” 

“But it doesn’t run in the family,” said Del. 

“Oh, well,” replied Robert, with a careless 
laugh, “ Nat’s bound to be original in everything. 
He’s like a pearl-oyster — that fellow. He carries 
his jewel inside.” 

Del deliberated in silence for a moment on this 
comparison. Then she returned to the charge. 

“What else would you do, Rob?” 

“Well, there’s Eric. Guess the naval academy 
at Annapolis would suit him pretty well.” 

“The naval academy? What’s that? I don’t 
know about it. Tell me,” said Del. 


FORTUNE - TELLING. 


99 


‘‘Father’ll tell you,” replied Robert; “ask him. 
He’s the universal encyclopaedia and circulating 
library of this island.” 

“What else would you do.^” demanded Del. 

Robert leaned on his scythe and pushed back 
his torn straw hat, that the sea-breeze might fan 
his wet forehead. 

“ I would send Nick inland with mother. The 
winters here are too rough for that little chap. I 
don’t like to hear him cough every morning.” 

“Would you send Aunt Marion inland.?” asked 
Del. 

Robert was answering quite seriously now. 
These replies were not sudden flights of imagina- 
tion, but the fruits of such perplexed and anxious 
thought as usually falls to the lot of father rather 
than of son. 

“ I would take mother back to her own folks. 
She pines for the hills and woods she was used 
to when she was a girl, and she hates the very 
look of the ocean. It would be good,” contin- 
ued the lad, as if talking to himself, “to hear 
mother laugh again.” 

“And how about Uncle Maurice.?” asked Del. 
“You mustn’t leave him out.” 

“Leave him out! I should think not,” replied 
Robert, with kindling eyes. “Father should have 
the best of everything, always, as he deserves, 


100 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


and no trouble about it. He never was made for 
practical affairs, and it’s a shame that he ever 
need be bothered with them. Really, Del, your 
Captain Kidd idea gets interesting. I believe I’ll 
fetch my hoe.” 

As Del’s eyes watched the glowing, smiling 
face of the young haymaker, a shade of dissatis- 
faction crept over them, dimming the blue. 

“You’re such an uncomfortably good fellow, 
Rob,” she exclaimed, “you make the rest of us 
seem so selfish. I had planned no end of things 
I would do, if I found a buried treasure in the 
fields, or if a gold-chest washed up on shore, but 
not such things as those. I could draw in the 
sand for you every arch and column of the beauti- 
ful palace I would build in the loveliest spot of all 
the world. It should be just like the Alhambra 
in Uncle Maurice’s big book. And I could tell 
you the names of all my fleet white horses, with 
arched necks and flowing manes, that would eat 
out of my. hand. I have put myself to sleep ever 
so many nights thinking about those horses. But 
you are so dreadfully matter-of-fact and — and — - 
well ! I suppose perhaps it’s the best way. But 
wouldn’t you do anything for yourself, Rob ? ” 

Robert laughed and went on swinging his 
scythe with the easy grace of strength. 

“Yes,” he said, with a twinkle in the eye that 


FORTUNE -TELLING. lOI 

peeped at Del through a crevice in the dilapidated 
hat-brim ; “there’s one thing I’d do for myself.” 

“Oh, what.?” demanded Del, eagerly. 

“There’s one thing that I’d get for myself,” 
repeated Robert, adding meditatively, “that is, if 
I could afford it.” 

“What.?” cried Del, rolling off the haycock in 
her impatience. 

“A new straw hat,” concluded Robert. 

Del was so disgusted that she started to go 
home, but repented and came back, standing very 
straight as she faced this frivolous young farmer. 

“Rob, do you want me to tell your fortune .?”^ 

“Will it take long.?” asked Robert, glancing 
somewhat anxiously toward the declining sun. 

The unappreciated sibyl stamped her foot in 
vexation. This was not lessened when she found 
that she had stamped upon a nettle, from which 
the sole of her satin slipper afforded small 
protection. 

“Robert Yorke,” she said, with unwonted se- 
verity, for the tingling foot ruffled her prophetic 
mind, “your fortune will be worse than you will 
ever tell and better than you will ever know. 
You’ll give away everything that belongs to you, 
until some day you’ll wish you hadn’t, and then 
some other day,” added Del, relenting as the 
sting in her foot grew easier, “you’ll be glad you 


102 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


did. For you are really ever so good, Rob, and if 
it wasn’t for Uncle Maurice and Grandma Brim- 
blecomb, I don’t know but what you would be 
almost the nicest person on the island.” 

“You’re not partial to your own family, at any 
rate,” laughed Robert. “Hello! There comes 
Eric.” 

“Oh, elegant!” cried the sibyl, dancing with 
delight, but at a safe distance from the nettle ; 
“now at last I’ll have somebody to admire my 
dress.” 

Eric, ruddy as a young David, came bounding 
across the field. 

“Whew!” he cried, a rod away, “isn’t that a 
daisy get-up, though ! It’s tiptop. It beats the 
sea-weeds hollow. I tell you, it’s la-la. Don’t 
you think so, Rob.?” 

“ I think you had better pick up that hayrake, 
young man, and get to work,” returned the elder 
brother, trying to speak sternly. 

But Del was satisfied, and, selecting a haycock 
midway between the two lads, arranged the folds 
of her blue and buff drapery with an eye to the 
picturesque. 


CHAPTER V. 


THE HERMIT. 


Cooling of the air with sighs 


In an odd angle of the isle, and sitting, 
His arms in this sad knot. 


— William Shakespeare, 



HILE Del was chatting with the Yorke 


boys in the hayfield, Dolo was paying a 


visit to no less a personage than the veritable 
oldest inhabitant, the Hermit himself. For there 
is no gentle heart, however desolate, that may 
not, at one time or another, open in response to 
the new touch upon the latchstring and among 
the embers on the hearth awaken a little glow of 
welcome for the unexpected guest. Even thus 
it had come to pass that the recluse of fifty years 
had now, at the latter end of his bleak and broken 
life, found a friend in this unaccountable little 
maiden, who, so wayward with her sister, so cold 
to the majority of her few companions on the 
island, chose to bestow upon this forlorn old man 


104 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


something of the same grave and watchful tender- 
ness that Baby Merry knew and loved. 

As Dolo, walking along the sand with swift, 
light steps, neared the south-western corner of 
the island, she descried in the low doorway of 
the familiar hut the crouching figure of the Her- 
mit, wrapt in a long butternut coat, the thin white 
hairs blowing about his bared head and one 
withered hand mechanically beating time to the 
melancholy tune he was crooning. Dolo recog- 
nized the strain as far away as she could hear it. 
Indeed, there was no one on the island, not even 
Mr. Rexford and Miss Lucas excepted, who had 
not taken advantage of some summer gloaming 
to steal quietly up the shore to hearken to the 
monotonous cadences of the incoherent ballad, 
presumably of his own composition, through which 
the Hermit told his neighbors all that they knew 
of the twenty odd years before that autumnal 
twilight when, as tradition said, a wild-eyed young 
man, pallid and travel-stained, but with a well- 
filled purse, had appeared in the opposite village 
on the mainland and purchased the western half 
of the island, which he had never once quitted 
since taking up his residence there the day after 
the sale. Usually, when a human form came in 
sight, the Hermit hushed his recitative and van- 
ished inside his doorway. This was why the 


THE HERMIT.; 


.105 


islanders drew near by dusk to listen. But since 
the bright May morning, four summers ago, when 
Dolo, then a child , barely ten years old, had 
flashed out upon him from behind the hut with 
her arms full of the trailing arbutus, which she 
showered upon his knees — a wealth of sweet, 
pink, dewy blossoms, the old man had neither 
silenced his singing nor withdrawn from view at 
her approach. This afternoon his tones struck 
Dole’s ear as low and feeble beyond their wont, 
and she noticed that he was not chanting his 
score or more of crude stanzas consecutively, but 
was selecting one here and another there, as 
fancy led him. 


“ Oh, fare ye well, my father’s halls ! 

The sunset gleams, the ocean calls. 

The eager waters westward flow; 

I’ll come again, when hawthorns blow. 


“The lonely prairie reaches far. 

A household light — my guiding star. 
A rough log-cabin small to see, 

But large in hospitality. 


■ “ Like violets shy her eyes were blue, 

. Yet violets smile through globes of dew, 


io6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


And so my love in April years 

Had learned to smile on me through tears. 


“‘Too young. Too rich. Nay, trust him not ; 
A rover’s vows are soon forgot.’ 

No faith had they in lovers’ eyes, 

Or love’s delight in sacrifice. 


“ ‘ I cannot leave their hearth, for they 
Have me alone for staff and stay. 

I must not share your eastward path ; 
Farewell, but speak it not in wrath.’ 


“ That midnight ride across the plain I 
Her message burned my heart and brain. 
I kissed the dead at morning-sun. 

And ever since I am undone. 


“ I know not where my wits may be, 
•But circled by the moaning sea. 

My love, my lost, I sing of thee. 
And some day death will pity me.” 


Instead of proceeding directly to the hut, Dolo, 
her eye attracted by the glint of briar roses in the 
tall grass on top of the bluff, turned her steps in 
that direction, for the island, it should be under- 


THE HERMIT. 


107 


stood, consisted of a long, earthy ridge, descending 
abruptly on north and south to low, flat beaches. 
In fact, as Eric once brilliantly suggested, if only 
Hermit Island had been joined to two continents, 
it would have been an isthmus. The western side 
was rocky, but elsewhere the island was as devoid 
of rocks as of trees, and the soil was so poor and 
ocean-starved that Robert’s most diligent labors on 
the farm, seconded by such aid as Nathan and Eric 
might render, yielded but barren results. The 
soil produced of its own will nothing but coarse 
weeds and grasses, with sweetbay, blueberries, 
cranberries, strawberries and roses, a patch or 
two of May-flowers in the spring and in the fall 
abundant splendor of golden rod. Of the five 
structures on the island, three were built on the 
south beach, under shelter of the bluff, as near 
the line of flood tide as was practicable, but the 
Yorke house and barn stood higher, at the eastern 
point of the strip of upland. 

Though the incline was steep here at the west- 
ern end of the island, Dolo clambered nimbly up 
the sandy slope and plucked a few beckoning 
sprays of the wild roses. Then gathering her 
skirts about her, she deliberately sat down on her 
little bare heels and coasted over the bank in the 
most approved island fashion, landing in a com- 
fortable, topsy-turvy bunch upon the soft white 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


I08 

sand at the bottom. The Hermit was following 
her movements with brightening eyes, and though 
his tremulous right hand still beat the time, the 
gray lips had forgotten to sing. 

Dolo came up smiling and slipped one of the 
daintiest sprays into that poor, restless hand, 
which thereupon desisted from its mechanical 
motion, clasping loosely the prickly stem. Dolo 
touched his shoulder lightly with two small brown 
fingers, and the Hermit moved to one side on the 
step, so as to give her room to pass by him into 
the windowless hut. The interior was a single 
room, furnished with a brick fireplace, a bundle of 
drift-wood, a heap of buffalo robes, a kettle, bowl, 
spoon, meal-chest, salt-box, and sea-biscuit can. 
Dolo, evidently accustomed to the place, glanced 
about her sharply, tidied the disordered buffalo 
robes, laid a few bits of the drift-wood ready for 
an evening fire, took the bowl out behind the hut 
to a brackish well, where she filled it with water 
and then arranged the roses in it, grouping them 
with a tasteful delicacy of touch one would hardly 
have expected from such a little barbarian, deftly 
twisted a mat of grasses, placed upon this a couple 
of the hard biscuits, with a fragment of dried fish, 
which with a somewhat irregular philanthropy she 
had purloined from the frugal pantry at home, 
and finally set both mat and bowl upon the door- 


THE HERMIT. 


109 


step by the old man’s side, curling herself up 
sociably in the sand near by. 

The Hermit was still busied with the wild rose 
Dolo had given him, holding it close to his dim 
eyes and touching the exquisite petals timidly 
with first one finger-tip and then another. 

‘‘The same color!” he was murmuring; “the 
same color I When was it ? Where was it ? 
The same color ! ” 

The old man, dropping the rose, clasped his 
temples in his two hands with a dazed expression. 
After a little, he began to fumble in an inner 
pocket and finally drew out a curious old wallet, 
that seemed on the point of dropping to pieces for 
age. As the Hermit, so absorbed in the remote 
associations aroused by the tint of the rose-petals 
as to be oblivious of her presence, began with 
shaking hands to open the wallet, Dolo was dis- 
tinctly aware that she would have a higher respect 
for herself all the rest of her life, if now she 
turned away her head. But the inquisitive little 
head sat too stiffly on its peering neck for that. 
Dolo wanted to see, and she saw. On the whole, 
there is no character in Hebrew Scripture whose 
example has been more generally followed than 
Esau’s; for what is the ideal, far-glimmering 
birthright in comparison with the savory mess of 
pottage before one’s hungry eyes ? Dolo never 


I 10 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


ceased to scorn herself for the vulgarity of that 
look ; but she saw. 

And after all, it was very little to see. There 
were greenbacks in one compartment, gold pieces 
in another, in the third a much-folded paper, 
which Dolo firmly believed to be a love-letter, but 
which was in reality the deed of the Hermit’s half 
of the island, and in the last, together with a few 
dark, crumbling, still-fragrant bits of what had 
once been English violets, a simple bow of ribbon, 
such as a modest country girl might have worn at 
her throat. The ribbon was now of a dull yellow- 
ish hue. Perhaps it had once been pink. Who 
knows ? At all events, the old man took this out 
with reverent tenderness, placed the fresh rose 
beside it, shook his white head in sad perplexity, 
and finally restored the ribbon to the wallet and 
the wallet to his pocket. 

Dolo felt disappointed. The pottage — and 
this, by the way, is a permanent characteristic 
of pottage — had not come up to her expectations. 

Stooping after the flower which he had dropped 
in putting back the wallet, the Hermit caught 
sight of the bowl of roses on the doorstep beside 
him, and of the spare supper made attractive by 
their presence. The cloud gradually cleared from 
his face, the look of bewilderment, bordering 
upon the wildness of insanity, melted from his 


THE HERMIT. 


Ill 


eyes, and glancing about for Dolo, he smiled upon 
her with a childlike friendliness. Dolo smiled 
back brightly and sweetly, as she smiled upon no 
one else save Baby Merry and rarely upon Nathan 
or his father. 

The Hermit pointed to a black object, well to 
the westward, on the bluff above the rocks. Dolo 
knew it well. It was the hulk of a wrecked fish- 
ing schooner hurled ashore there in the terrible 
September gale years ago. The Hermit had left 
the bruised timbers undisturbed and they were 
now lichened and mossed by time. 

“ Poor old wreck ! Kind little moss ! said the 
Hermit, and nodded significantly. Then he laid 
the hand, with which he had pointed to the wreck, 
upon his breast, sighed wearily, and afterward 
smiled and passed his fingers caressingly over the 
roses in the bowl. 

Dolo understood. like to do things for you,’' 
she remarked, briefly but convincingly. The Her- 
mit repeated the words to himself in a pleased, 
crooning tone several times over. Then a painful 
thought seemed to strike him, for he bent for- 
ward with a sudden motion and looked the girl 
anxiously in the face. 

“ When are you going he asked. 

“ Going where ? ” returned Dolo, in surprise. 

''Away — away.” 


I 12 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Off the island > ” 

“Yes, away — away.” 

“Why should you think I am going at all.?” 
asked Dolo, puzzled. 

The gleam in the Hermit’s eyes faded out. 
The excitement of dialogue quickly exhausted 
him. He had already lost his thought. But he 
held to the word going and muttered it over and 
over. Presently he turned to Dolo again. 

“Wrecks stay here — only wrecks. You must 
be going — going.” 

“Oh, but you don’t know how many people 
there are on the island,” said Dolo, cheerily. 

“Wrecks,” insisted the Hermit. 

“No,” said Dolo; “there’s Cap’n Noll” — 

The Hermit’s eyes brightened again with the 
flash of what must have been once a keen 
intelligence. 

“Not seaworthy,” he said, with something 
almost like mischief in his smile. “Fine craft. 
Great voyages. All done. Hauled up on shore. 
Past repairs.” 

Dolo laughed outright. She had not hitherto 
suspected that the recluse had even distinguished 
his fellow islanders from one another — much less 
acquired any knowledge of their respective careers 
and characters. 

“But there’s Mr. Yorke,” she suggested; “only 


THE HERMIT. 


13 


he likes better to have us call him Uncle 
Maurice.” 

The Hermit wagged his white head sagely. 

“Drift,” he said. 

“Then there’s my father,” Dolo added, her 
black eyes now keenly intent upon the oracle. 

“Wreck,” pronounced the Hermit. “Hidden 
rocks.” 

Dolo started to speak again, but checked her- 
self, observing that the old man’s head had fallen 
forward on his breast. Wearied by the direct 
strain of conversation, for which his many years 
of solitude had unfitted him, the Hermit would 
often take this attitude, during Dole’s visits, as a 
sign to her that he could bear no more questions. 
But after a few moments of rest, he would some- 
times, regardless of her presence, ramble on in 
incoherent talk, as if to himself, for half an hour 
at a time. On this occasion Dolo had longer to 
wait than usual, but the tide of speech once 
begun, although low and broken at first, soon 
grew firmer and clearer, riveting her attention. 

“ Going away — away ! Who takes her away ? 
Who strips the poor old wreck of its moss ? 
Going away — away.? Who said it.? Did one of 
the faces in the dark say it .? Mocking faces, 
cruel faces, hateful faces, horrible, angry faces 
that I hide from 1 Did the wood-sawyer say it .? 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


II4 

What does that wood-sawyer want with me ? 
Always there, always there, in the corner, saw- 
ing, sawing, with his face turned away ! When 
the dark comes, he comes. Where does he go 
when the dark goes.? He has been sawing so 
long. Why doesn’t the wood fall.? So long! 
Many, many, many nights I The wood must be 
nearly sawed through now. I wish I could see 
his face. Would it be evil, like the others .? 
Why does he never turn his head .? The other 
faces press close about me. I cover my eyes with 
the buffalo robes. But he — what look is on his 
face .? That small stoop-shouldered figure always 
there and always sawing I It stays longer than 
the faces. It stays until the dark goes away. 
Going away .? Who is going away .? Where did I 
see it .? Was it one of the pictures in the dark .? 
It was the sea, and a path all of gold across it, 
and down the path a boat coming to the island. 
Will the boat take her away .? ” 

Dolo started. The scene of the previous night 
flashed back upon her mind and her idle words 
with Nat. Her abrupt movement roused the 
Hermit out of his reverie. He looked up at her 
with his faint, wistful smile — a pathetic ghost of 
a smile, haunting a face that had fong forgotten 
the living presence of joy, and spoke to her again, 
more rationally than before. For while his man- 


THE HERMIT. 


II5 

ner toward Dolo was always gentle, the Hermit 
usually became, by the latter part of an interview, 
when the wholesome influence of this contact 
with a sounder and more natural mind than his 
own had had time to work upon him, far less wild 
and incoherent in his speech. 

“You are not like your mother,” he said, 
gazing earnestly upon the brown-faced, black- 
haired little figure before him. 

Dolo reddened. Del had been right in her 
intuition. It was sorrow and shame to the 
younger sister — for Dolo was Del’s junior by a 
year — that she bore the lineaments of the parent 
she distrusted and dreaded rather than of the par- 
ent she remembered with an intensity of yearning 
love and pain which was thus far the deepest pas- 
sion of her life. 

“When did you ever see my mamma.?” she 
asked. 

“It was her honeymoon,” answered the Hermit, 
slowly; “she was young and her eyes were blue. 
Her eyes were glad. Not all blue eyes are glad. 
Her husband walked with her on the beach. It 
hurt me to see them.” 

The Hermit seemed about to lapse again into 
one of his brooding moods, but Dolo arrested him 
by a question. 

“ Was she ever here afterwards .? ” 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


I l6 

The Hermit passed his hand across his brow in 
a weary effort at memory. 

“There was another summer. A baby cried. 
She was paler when she walked on the beach. 
She leaned on her husband’s arm. A nurse car- 
ried the baby. It had blue eyes, like hers. And 
it hurt me to see.” 

“Del born on the island!” exclaimed Dolo, in 
great surprise. “I wonder if I was born here, 
too. Did mamma come again ? Please try and 
remember.” 

The girl’s tone was eager and pleading, but the 
strength of the Hermit was well-nigh spent. 

“ Blue eyes shut too early,” he sighed. “ They 
showed us the color of heaven. But they are 
shut. And we forget the color.” 

The old man’s head fell forward heavily upon 
his breast. Dolo realized, with a shoot of contri- 
tion, that she had allowed her feeble friend to 
exert himself too far. She rose, ran down to 
the well, wet her coarse little handkerchief, and, 
returning, touched it to the sallow cheeks and 
forehead. The Hermit, who was moaning faintly 
and rocking himself to and fro, reached out his 
hand for it and held it pressed against his eyelids. 

“Well, let him keep it, then!” thought Dolo. 
“Miss Lucas will miss it when she counts my 
things over, but what do I care ? ” 


THE HERMIT. 


II7 

And with an independent toss of the head, 
the girl turned away and strolled down to the 
shore, casting back one compassionate glance at 
the huddled, swaying, white-headed figure in the 
doorway of the lonely little hut. 

The tide was coming in, and Dolo, throwing her- 
self down upon the sand, watched the creaming 
surf. The sea-expanse was a soft gray, glinting 
here and there with emerald. There floated over- 
head a few cloud-films of a clear, delicate ame- 
thystine tint that shaded into the blue of the sky. 
Presently Nat came striding along the beach. He 
walked with tolerable ease until Dolo looked up 
and caught sight of him. Then embarrassment 
struck to his legs. They became wooden and 
irresponsible. Dolo marked his awkward gait 
calmly, but her calmness enhanced Nathan’s con- 
fusion. No one was more conscious than himself 
of the aberrations of those unsubjected members. 

“Why aren’t you doing Calculus ? ” called Dolo. 

“Your father wouldn’t see me,” replied Nathan, 
letting himself down cautiously and stiffly to a 
sitting posture upon the sand. 

“Wouldn’t see you.?” echoed Dolo. 

“No,” growled Nathan; “and I wasn’t late, 
either. I ran every step of the way. But he 
wouldn’t see me.” 

“ Why not .? ” queried Dolo, with an indiifer- 


Ii8 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


ent air. In reality she thought it very strange 
that her father should refuse to see Nat, when he 
was the only person on the island at whose com- 
ing the gloom on that austere face ever lifted ; 
but it is not necessary to show all that one 
thinks. 

“Don’t know,” replied Nat, punching holes in 
the sand with his long forefinger; “but Miss 
T ombstone — I mean — that is — Miss Lucas — 
met me at the door and told me that Mr. Rexford 
had gone into his study and left word with her 
that he was not to be disturbed.” 

“That’s queer,” commented Dolo, with a short 
laugh. 

“May I stay here.?” asked Nat, looking up at 
Dolo with gray eyes that had lights in them. 

“If you won’t talk,” remarked Dolo, with a lazy 
little yawn. “I hate people that talk all the 
time.” 

“ So do I,” assented Nat, with unexpected cord- 
iality, and promptly took up his Calculus. 

In about an hour Dolo broke the silence. 

“I should think you would rather look at the 
sunset than those old figures,” she said. 

Nat closed his Calculus and solemnly regarded 
the sunset. 

Presently a wave broke over their feet and they 
moved back several paces. 


THE HERMIT. 


I 19 

In half an hour more Nat spoke. “ It’s supper- 
time. Let’s go home.” 

Dolo had been on the point of making this very 
proposition, but to propose and to accept are 
diverse operations, requiring unlike states of 
mind. Dolo settled herself more comfortably on 
the sand, saying firmly — 

I shall wait for the moonrise.” 

Nat was hungry and had half a mind to tramp 
off alone, but thought better of it and waited, too. 
He reflected that pretty soon Dolo would get tired 
of being exasperating, and then she would be very 
good company. 

Dolo did not get tired of being exasperating, 
but she forgot to keep it up. Her thoughts, ran 
away with her and suddenly she exclaimed — 

“Nat, should you like ta go away frorq the 
island?’^ 

“Of course I should,” responded Nat. 

“Why.!^” asked Dolo. “What is there off the 
island.?” 

“That’s what I want to find out,” said Nat. 

“Why don’t you ask your father to send you 
away to school.?” inquired Dolo, demurely, the 
dusk serving to hide the wicked little lines at the 
corners of her mouth. 

Nat flushed from his blouse-collar to the rim of 
his sandy hair. 


120 HERMIT ISLAND. 

“You know he can’t I wish you would keep 
still about my father. He does everything for us 
all, except” — 

“What you want most,” concluded Dolo. 

Nat’s flush grew darker. “Look out there! I 
won’t stand it,” he said in a low, threatening tone. 

“I haven’t said anything against your father,” 
protested Dolo, with an innocent accent. 

“You meant something,” retorted Nat, sullenly. 

“You’re cross,” observed Dolo, with serene 
indifference. 

“I’ll be crosser, if you don’t take care,” replied 
Nat, ungallantly. 

Dolo laughed, rather as if she were pleased 
with her companion than otherwise, and changed 
the subject. 

“What should you think, if I went away ” 

“You I ” exclaimed Nat. 

“Yes. What should you think.?” 

“Pooh! You’ll not go. How could you .? Girls 
don’t go away from places.” 

Then they sat silent a fittle longer, while the 
full moon, rising in an orange mist, cast her long, 
bright ray across the sea. Suddenly Dolo turned 
her head and listened. The Hermit had begun 
once more to croon his monotonous song. Dolo 
sprang to her feet and moved away with her 
swift, stealthy tread in the direction of the hut. 


• THE HERMIT. 


I2I 

Returning shortly, she started down the beach for 
home. Nat soon overtook her. 

“He’s all right now,” said Dolo. 

“The Hermit.?” asked Nat. “Was anything 
wrong with him to-day .? ” 

“ He seemed tired when I left him, but he has 
eaten his supper now and gone to singing,” said 
Dolo. “He is growing very old. Some day I 
shall come to the hut and find him*dead.” 

Nat drew a step away from her. 

“I thought you were fond of him,” he said. 

“I am,” replied Dolo. “That’s how I know 
that he is growing old.” 

They paced the sand in silence for some min- 
utes after that, Nat whistling softly and Dolo 
keeping her eyes steadily seaward. Presently 
she flung a question over her shoulder — “Why 
do you like mathematics .? ” 

Nathan stopped whistling and considered. 

“Seems truer than most things,” he said. 
“That’s all. Take Euclid, now. If this is so 
and that is so, why, the other something has got 
to be so, and there’s no way out of it.” 

Dolo laughed one of her abrupt little laughs 
and shrugged her left shoulder. 

“ I like a way out, and I don’t believe Euclid is 
any truer than — moonlight,” she said. 

Nathan glanced contemptuously out upon the 


122 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


silvery ocean, spanned by that ruddy' path, and 
then gave a violent start and grasped Dolo’s arm. 

“Look! look!” he cried, excitedly; “as true’s 
I live, there’s a boat coming down that beam of 
moonshine to the island.” 

“What else have I been looking at for the last 
half-hour.^” asked Del, curtly. 


[Note. The author begs leave to state that the stanzas 
ascribed to the Hermit are adapted from certain traditional bal- 
lad stanzas hinting at a like history and sung by a veritable 
hermit-poet, known as Dr. Jones, who died in Milford, N. H., 
some fifty years ago.] 


CHAPTER VI. 


THE ARRIVAL, 


We are much bound to them that do succeed; 
But, in a more pathetic sense, are bound 
To such as fail. They all our loss expound; 
They comfort us for work that will not speed. 
And life — itself a failure. 


— Jean Ingelow. 



OLO and Nat stood waiting. The boat came 


nearer and nearer, until the two figures in 
her could be clearly discerned. The oarsman 
Nat recognized as a grizzled old fisherman from 
the coast, but the passenger, a showily dressed 
man of middle age, half reclining in the stern, 
with a very pale face drooping over the water, had 
never been seen before in the vicinity of Hermit 
Island. The dash through the surf was accom- 
plished without accident, and the fisherman, rising 
and steadying his boat by one oar, called to Nat 


124 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


to help the stranger land. But despite Nat's 
assistance, the passenger effected but a clumsy 
leap, getting himself wet to the knees. 

“Catch!” he called from the shore to the boat- 
man, flinging him a five-dollar gold- piece; “and 
be hanged to you. This is the vilest voyage I 
ever made.” 

“If gen’lemen will be seasick, so much the 
worse for the gen’lemen,” growled back the 
offended skipper; “but ye couldn’t hev had a 
tidier trip nor a slicker sea, if ye had prayed 
fur’t. So good-night an’ be hanged to j/ou/* 

And whistling Yankee Doodle with patriotic 
fervor, this free and equal American in tarpaulin 
and duck nodded grimly to his fellow-citizen in 
silk hat and broadcloth, and pushed the dory off. 

“Hold on, there!” called his ex-passenger after 
him; “you’re to bring your leaky old tub around 
for me to-morrow morning at ten o’clock. Do 
you hear.'^” 

“Ay, ay!” returned the incensed fisherman; 
“I hear an’ thet’s the end on’t. Did ye ever 
hearn tell o’ tides, or do ye take me fur a stage- 
coach an’ four ? May I kick the bucket this here 
blessed night, if ever I let the likes o’ you set 
foot on plank o’ mine agin.” 

“Nonsense, my man!” shouted the stranger, 
for the boat was fast receding; “come to-morrow 


THE ARRIVAL. 


125 


morning, like a good fellow, and earn another five 
dollars." 

“Who sasses my boat sasses me," roared back 
the implacable skipper, passing his rough hand 
tenderly along the gunwale of his dory ; “ I would 
n’t hurt the feelin’s o’ my leetle Nancy here by 
axin’ her to take you in agin, arter them late 
remarks o’ yourn — no, not fur a hatful of gold- 
pieces. A leaky old tub ! My Nanny-boat ! ’’ 

And the fisherman, glowering through the dark, 
bent to his oars with an energy that carried him 
swiftly out of earshot. 

“And he a Yankee!" ejaculated the stranger, 
laughing in spite of his evident discomfiture; “I 
thought a Yankee would sell the tomb of his 
ancestors — colonial or otherwise — for a nickel." 

“Then you thought wrong," observed Nat, in a 
tone of sulky displeasure. 

The stranger took off his tall hat and bowed 
profoundly to the four quarters of the heavens, 
saying with mock humility — 

“ Be it known to all whom it may concern that 
I, a seasick, travelworn wanderer, visiting these 
inhospitable shores on an errand of friendship, do 
neither think, speak nor secretly intend the faint- 
est shadow of disrespect to any baked-beans-and- 
brown-bread-devouring individual of all the Down 
East species — much less to Yankeedom at large. 


126 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Long live fishballs ! Long live the nasal and the 
drawl ! I ask for nothing hut a chance to hide 
my diminished head in the nearest hotel, tavern, 
hoarding-house or whatever there may he, and 
sleep off the remains of my seasickness before 
I attempt to renew intercourse with the high- 
minded (and hot-tempered) sons of the Puritans.” 

Whatever of wit there may have been in this 
address, Nat failed to discover. A keen dislike 
of the stranger had possessed him, and the boy, 
turning on his heel, unceremoniously walked 
away. 

‘^Oh, the dickens! But this is carrying things 
too far,” exclaimed the man, impatiently, placing 
his hat upon his head again, a little on one side ; 
“is there nobody in this howling wilderness who 
will tell me where I can get a night’s lodging .J* 
I’ll shoot the man who says supper to me, but a 
bed I must have, and at short notice, too.” 

“Shall I telephone for a hack.?” asked Dolo, 
suddenly, from the background. 

The man wheeled about, and, catching sight of 
a girlish figure, hurriedly caught off his hat once 
more. 

“Oh, thanks! Yes, if you would. But no! 
This young man is laughing. Are you joking 
me .? We are more hospitable to strangers in the 
west.” 


THE ARRIVAL. 


127 


Seeing how white his face showed in the moon- 
light, Dolo had a twinge of conscience, which 
communicated itself, by sympathy, to Nat. 

“We’re not much used to strangers here, sir,” 
said Nat, strolling back again and making an 
effort to speak civilly; “and we have no hotels, 
hacks, telephones or anything of the sort.” 

“But there must surely be some place,” urged 
the stranger, “where I can be taken in for the 
night.” 

Nat and Dolo exchanged doubtful glances. 

“There’s not a single spare bed in our house,” 
said Dolo, in a low tone, “and father” — 

Nat nodded. “Yes, I know. That wouldn’t 
do. But I suppose I can turn in with Rob and 
give up my bunk. Nick and Eric bunk together, 
as it is, but they’re small fry. Or maybe Cap’n 
Noll could manage to swing him a hammock over 
there.” 

“ But do you mean to tell me,” asked the stran- 
ger, “that there are private houses only on this 
island ? ” 

“Yes — four of them,” replied Nat, shortly. 

“Four! Did you say four.? And haven’t you 
any arrangements for entertaining — we’ll not say 
strangers, but your own friends and relatives.?” 
inquired the man further, his astonishment evi- 
dently on the increase. “Not a log-cabin in the 


128 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


west but has its guest-chamber, or, at the worst, 
guest-bed. You mustn’t mind my surprise, you 
know, but all this seems so odd to me.” 

“ It is odd. We’re odd,” said Dolo, in her 
abrupt fashion. 

“I believe you,” assented the stranger, fer- 
vently : “ but do you never have visitors ? ” 

“Cap’n Noll had his old first-mate over here 
once for a couple of days, three summers ago,” 
said Nat, slowly, looking to Dolo for confirmation. 

“Yes,” said Dolo; “and that’s all for seven 
years — except the tax-collector. He stayed to 
dinner with Cap’n Noll twice.” 

“Three times,” corrected Nat. 

“Great Scott! what a desert!” exclaimed the 
stranger. 

“Oh! the fishermen touch here sometimes,” 
•put in Nat, half angrily, “and we boys, and some- 
times Cap’n Noll with us, pull over to the coast 
once a week in the open weather. In winter we 
get along as we can. The women-folks never go 
off the island. Why should they.-^” 

“Why shouldn’t they.?” asked Dolo. “Del 
and I wanted to go over to the coast with the 
boys last summer, just for once — wanted to so 
much that we even asked father if we might. 
Uncle Maurice wouldn’t let the boys take us 
unless we asked father.” 


THE ARRIVAL. 


129 


“And he said no,” added Nat. 

“Of course he did,” said Dolo, resentfully, 
shrugging her left shoulder; “but — yes, it is odd, 
and we are odd and queer and not like folks.” 

“ Queer ! I should think you would all be 
lunatics,” exclaimed the stranger ; “ but how — 
begging your pardon — how can you tell that you 
are not like folks ? How should you know what 
folks are like.? And where, my lady jester, did 
you ever hear of the telephone .? 

“Books,” responded Dolo, concisely; “Uncle 
Maurice knows everything, and he teaches us. 
Our minds can get off the island, if we can’t.” 

“You mean we can, if our bodies can’t,” remon- 
strated Nat. “Minds are the we-part of us. I’ve 
always told you that.” 

Dolo shook her head at Nat with a disputatious 
shake, but the stranger, cutting short the impend- 
ing metaphysics, broke in with renewed exclama- 
tions of amazement. 

“The loneliness of it! The folly of it I The 
sheer waste and madness of it! To think that a 
fellow like Horace Rexford should bury his talents 
in such a Robinson Crusoe solitude as this ! Pre- 
posterous ! And poor Mary’s children ! Some- 
thing must be done. Something must be done.” 

At that moment Dolo chanced to step from 
the shadow into the full moonlight, and the 


130 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


speaker, getting his first view of her features, 
checked himself abruptly. 

It must be — but no! Impossible. And yet 
it must be. It is Horace Rexford’s face, but 
Mary Rexford’s daughter here in such a — I beg 
a thousand pardons. I am still so bewildered 
from the effects of my sea-sickness, so faint and 
light-headed, that I forget my manners. Yet it 
must be that I have the pleasure of addressing 
Miss Rexford.” 

Dolo stared. She had never before been called 
Miss Rexford in all her fourteen years. She had 
a vague intuition that there was some particular 
thing this gentleman expected her to say or do, 
but what it was she knew no more than a sand- 
peep would know how to sing at a canary party. 

Oh, but this is too bad I ” said the stranger, 
involuntarily ; and the last time I saw Mary Rex- 
ford she was the queen of the ball-room.” He 
checked himself again, and, bowing somewhat 
more jauntily than elegantly to Dolo, added in a 
different tone — 

“I am James Grafton, of Colorado Springs, a 
business acquaintance of your father, and a neigh- 
bor and admirer of your mother from the time our 
nurses pushed our baby-carriages side by side in 
Central Park, to the evening I danced with her at 
her coming-out ball — the prettiest affair of the 


THE ARRIVAL. 


31 


season. I have come down from Boston, where I 
was called by business, to this extraordinary island, 
though I am a wretchedly bad sailor, solely for the 
purpose of having a friendly chat with your father, 
and I am more than delighted to be so fortunate 
as to meet his daughter at the outset.” 

“I was rude about the telephone and the hack,” 
said Dolo, abruptly, abashed for the first time 
since her mother died and burrowing in the sand 
with one bare foot. 

“Oh, that was only a little joke,” Mr. Grafton 
hastened to say. “Don’t mention it. I quite 
enjoyed it, I assure you. And now perhaps you 
will be so good as to make me acquainted with 
your escort, this fine young fellow here.” 

However much Dolo might be conciliated by 
the blandishments of the stranger, Nat liked him 
less than ever. But the Yorke boys, despite their 
isolated life, had not been without home training 
and home example in courtesy during all these 
years that the little Rexford girls had been running 
wild, and Nat twitched off his hat and executed an 
awkward bow, as Dolo found words to say — 

“This.? Oh, this is Nathan Yorke. It’s his 
father. Uncle Maurice, who teaches us.” 

“Uncle Maurice.?” queried Mr. Grafton. 

“Not a really truly uncle,” explained Dolo; 
“but we call him so, because he’s good to us, and 


32 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


we call Nat’s mother Aunt Marion, and there’s 
Grandma Brimblecomb, too. But Cap’n Noll is 
just Cap’n Noll. He likes that best.” 

Mr. Grafton looked bewildered, and Nathan, 
ashamed at heart of the injustice his churlish 
behavior was doing his father, forced himself to 
speak with a show of cordiality, the moral effort 
being painfully manifest in the jerkiness of his 
utterance. 

'‘We mustn’t keep Mr. Grafton standing here, 
Dolo. He’s wet and half-sick. You had better 
come home with me, sir. We can give you only 
a bunk, but it’s pretty soft — for a bunk. And 
father will make you very welcome. So will 
mother.” 

“That’s cheery,” responded Mr. Grafton, with 
a ring of relief in his voice. “ Sorry to impose 
myself upon you in this off-hand fashion, but if 
you’ll take me in to-night and provide me with a 
boat and boatman to-morrow, you’ll put me under 
lasting obligations. And now shall we be walk- 
ing on ? Hello ! Get out ; get out, I say ! Con- 
found that wave ! I’m wet again.” 

Dolo laughed outright, and even Nat, for all 
his better breeding, found it hard to keep his 
countenance, as the indignant inlander, suddenly 
splashed by the surf, turned upon the ocean with 
a nrofane and ineffectual kick. 


THE ARRIVAL. 


133 


“’Tisn’t much use telling the waves to get out, 
when the tide’s rising,” commented Nat, leading 
the way higher up the beach; “but you won’t 
catch cold from salt water. And we’ll be home 
in ten minutes, where mother’ll give you a first- 
rate cup of hot tea. Supper’ll be ready and wait- 
ing, because I’m late to-night” 

“ Supper ? Hem ! Well, perhaps I could man- 
age that cup of tea you speak of and maybe a 
morsel of toast,” admitted Mr. Grafton, who was 
already much revived. 

An hour later this sea-vexed voyager was quite 
himself again, and, extended at lazy length in a 
wooden arm-chair before a blazing open fire, made 
himself so much at home that little Nick whis- 
pered to his mother, with an awe-stricken counte- 
nance — “Is he the President of America.?” 

The Yorke family, with Dolo and the stranger, 
were grouped about the five-foot fireplace piled 
high with drift-wood and seaweed. Mr. Grafton 
had possessed himself of Mr. Yorke’s chair, and 
that gentleman sat with humility on an uncom- 
fortably hot corner of the wood-box. Nick nest- 
led at his mother’s knee, Nat leaned against the 
mantel-shelf, Rob reposed his tired limbs on a 
long settle across whose further end Eric sat 
astride, and Dolo’s dark face peered out from the 
shadows that obscured all the room beyond the 


134 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


radius of the leaping firelight. The apartment 
was large, plainly, almost rudely furnished, but 
stamped rather by a free-and-easy simplicity than 
by the grim and desolate nakedness of the Rex- 
ford living-room. Pictures cut from magazines 
were pasted upon the walls, books were scattered 
about, fishing-rods leaned up in a corner, one of 
Eric’s well-whittled boats stood on a bracket fash- 
ioned by the same young carpenter, great shells 
from foreign shores, whale-teeth curiously carved, 
and corals — all these the gifts of Cap’n Noll, 
were ranged upon the mantel, and the many- 
tinted flames lent a magic and a glory to the 
whole. 

“Really,” remarked Mr. Grafton, in a tone 
which the young people vaguely felt to be objec- 
tionable; “really, you are very snug here. Very 
snug.” 

“Nat, hand Mr. Grafton a screen,” suggested 
Mrs. Yorke, a little timidly, for it was a long time 
now since she had been called upon to minister in 
the sacred rites of hospitality; “the fire is too hot 
on his face.” 

Nat slowly bestirred himself and passed one of 
Nick’s picture-cards wedged into a cleft stick. 

“Now I call this ingenious,” said Mr. Grafton, 
laughing more loudly than seemed necessary. “ I 
think I’ll have to carry this off with me for a 


THE ARRIVAL. 


135 


keepsake — that is, if the ladies will make it pre- 
cious by writing their names on it.” 

“Jingo ! How silly ! ” observed Eric, in a frank 
and cheerful tone. 

“ Hush, my son ! ” interposed Mrs. Yorke, much 
scandalized. “You must excuse these children, 
Mr. Grafton. They are fast turning into savages, 
all of them, since we came to live on this wretched 
island.” 

And Mrs. Yorke sighed the weary sigh to 
which her family had grown accustomed. 

“Pray don’t distress yourself, my dear lady,” 
said Mr. Grafton, good-naturedly — too good-natur- 
edly, Dolo thought. “Boys are always savages. 
It’s in the nature of the animal. Why, I was a 
boy myself once, and I dare say acted very much 
like these youngsters. I know my poor mother 
used to get tired of sending me out into the gar- 
den to break sticks off the currant-bushes.” 

“What for.^” asked Nick, innocently. 

Mr. Grafton winked, and rubbed his shoulders 
with a significant grimace. 

“Oh, for badness!” said Nick, and nodded with 
a sage expression. “When I’m bad, I have to 
sit still on my little stool and think about it half 
an hour.” 

“I should prefer the currant-stick,” said Mr. 
Grafton. “Sitting still never was my forte.” 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


136 


“Do currant-bushes grow in the neighborhood 
of Central Park.-*" asked Nat, with a suspicious 
glance. 

The quick-witted man of the world took his 
point instantly. 

“You didn’t see many kitchen-gardens in New 
York, the last time you were there, eh.?” he 
inquired, with a laugh; “my father’s house was 
in the suburbs, but the nurses from all the region 
about liked to gather and gossip in the Park. 
You would make a good lawyer on a cross-exam- 
ination, young man.” 

Nat wound his long legs about each other and 
felt as if he would rather have the blame of this 
stranger than the praise. 

“Nat wouldn’t make a good lawyer, either,” 
remarked Eric, with brotherly candor; “he stam- 
mers too much.” 

Robert gave the too ingenuous youth a reprov- 
ing little kick, to which Eric responded by tickling 
Rob’s ankles. 

“But what do you expect to make of any of 
these fine lads, off on this desert sandbank, Mr. 
Yorke.?” inquired the stranger, turning sharply 
on his host. 

“I had not realized,” answered Mr. Yorke, with 
an accent of blended courtesy and deprecation, 
“that it was time to think of that.” 


THE ARRIVAL, 1 3 / 

Mrs. Yorke heaved another sigh, while Robert 
and Nathan both flushed red. 

“Time!” said Mr. Grafton, in a tone that made 
Nat clench his hands; “my own boy has known 
what his career is to be since he was the age of 
this small shaver here.” 

“I know what mine’s to be,” announced Nick, 
solemnly; “I shall be an anarchist.” 

The family looked considerably startled. 

“Nat told me about ’em,” added Nick; “it’s 
like fire-crackers, only holier. You do it to save 
your country, like Thomas — no, it’s William Tell, 
and sometimes you don’t get hung.” 

The family countenance gradually cleared, and 
Mr. Grafton, with an impatient wave of the hand, 
resumed his interrupted statement. 

“My Jim has known since his sixth birthday 
that I mean him for a lumber-king, and every 
summer that boy teases to spend his vacation 
in the camps. I’m giving him what I call an 
eminently practical education, and when he comes 
to his twenty-first year, there won’t be a shrewder 
head for business in the state than his. He’s 
bound to make one of the biggest fortunes going, 
and it grinds him every day to think he’s a minor 
and can’t be taking up some of these corner- 
sections of government land. He knows the 
points of timber already better than his father 


138 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


does, and I’m no green hand at the busi- 
ness, though I’ve made my own pile in mining 
speculations.” 

“You seem to have a great respect for money,” 
suggested Mr. Yorke, dreamily. 

The other stared. 

“Well, yes; I should rather say I had. What 
do you mean ? Has money gone out of fashion 
on Hermit island.?” 

“Guess ’twas never in,” suggested Robert, from 
the settle. 

“But how in time do you live.?” asked the puz- 
zled visitor. 

“Uncle Maurice says we shouldn’t live in time 
— we should live in eternity,” volunteered Dolo. 

“Oh, our neighbor. Captain Brimblecomb, is a 
man of some means,” interposed Mrs. Yorke, 
hastily; “he owns this half of the island, and Mr. 
Rexford and my husband rent their houses of 
him. The further half is owned by the aged her- 
mit from whom the island takes its name.” 

“What sort of a customer is he.?” asked Mr. 
Grafton, carelessly; “some poor, half-witted old 
vagabond, I suppose.” 

Dolo, stung by this reference to her friend, and 
supposing herself secure under cover of the shad- 
ows, made a menacing gesture with her slender 
arm in the direction of the guest. At that 


THE ARRIVAL. 


139 


instant came a sudden leap of the firelight, reveal- 
ing the threatening little figure in all its wicked- 
ness ; but by good hap most of the company had 
their backs turned. Nat saw it, however, and 
smiled in grim approval. 

Meanwhile Mr. Yorke was saying, almost 
sternly — 

“ He is a lonely man, made sacred by long sor- 
row ; let us not speak of him.” 

Mr. Grafton laughed and continued with unruf- 
fled affability. “Just as you please. But are your 
other neighbors, too, ‘unmentionable by profane 
lips } Who, for instance, is this Cap’n Brim — 
Noll — what is it you call him.?” 

“0-li-ver Crom-well -h\Q ~ comb is what 
grandma calls him,” said Eric; “but that’s when 
he tells us whoppers.” 

“Captain Brimblecomb,” explained Mr. Yorke, 
courteously, “is a retired sea-captain, whose heart 
is still on the ocean. Since he cannot live on a 
ship longer, he takes this little island as a substi- 
tute. He is an excellent neighbor, rough but 
kindly, with perhaps an — an excess of the imag- 
inative faculty.” 

“Get him to show you his tattoo,” put in Eric, 
eagerly; “it’s just squee. I’d give anything if 
papa and mamma would let him do me all over in 
ships and light-houses and things ; but they won’t. 


140 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


They won’t even let me have an anchor on the 
back of my right hand.” 

And Eric twisted about on the settle and 
pounded Robert’s knees to soothe his own vexa- 
tion of spirit — a mode of self-consolation which 
resulted in his being suddenly rolled off the bench 
and deposited upon the floor. 

“Has this patron of the fine arts any family.^” 
asked Mr. Grafton, pursuing his inquiries with 
interest. 

“Yes,” said Mr. Yorke; “he is blessed in a 
lively, wholesome-hearted little wife, whom all the 
children have adopted as a grandma; but the 
apple of his eye is an orphaned granddaughter, 
scarcely more than a baby yet and the pet of the 
island.” 

“She is a bright child,” added Mrs Yorke, shak- 
ing her head mournfully ; “ I hope her grandpar- 
ents will not be so blind to her interests as to try 
and rear her here. She should be sent inland. 
She should have schooling and breeding and 
opportunities.” 

“Poor little thing!” sighed Nick, catching his 
mother’s tone, all unconsciously, with ludicrous 
effect; “I’m troubled about her, mamma. ’Deed 
I am. She doesn’t know hardly nothin’ at all 
about the world an’ she won’t believe me when I 
tell her things. I’m mortified to have her so 


THE ARRIVAL. 


I4I 

ig’orant. She says the stars are gold-pieces — 
’cause her grandpa puts one in her little bank for 
her every birthday, that’s why she thinks so ” — 

‘‘Puts in a star.?” asked Robert. 

“No, a gold-piece. You’re pretty ig’orant, too, 
I guess,” continued Nick, placidly; “an’ she says 
a lovely white angel goes ’round every night an’ 
polishes ’em up all bright and shiny on the under 
side of his wings. An’ when I say ’tisn’t so, she 
strikes me and runs away and won’t play with me 
any more.” 

“No matter, youngster,” said Mr. Grafton, after 
a burst of boisterous laughter, whereat Nick red- 
dened and looked aggrieved; “you’re not the first 
son of Adam to find out that the ladies have more 
ways than one of getting the best of an argument, 
and you won’t be the last. So it seems,” added 
the speaker, turning to Mr. Yorke, “that gold- 
pieces are not absolutely unknown in your rather 
bleak and sandy Arcadia. The old sea-dog must 
be well enough off. These weather-beaten old 
salts usually are. And how is it with Rexford.? 
Does he carry on any business or pursue any call- 
ing whatever here.?” 

Mr. Yorke hesitated. 

“I know Mr. Rexford but slightly,” he said, 
glancing in Dole’s direction to remind the guest 
of her presence; “and he is disposed to be reti- 


142 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


cent, SO that I cannot undertake to say what his 
occupations may be. He is at present tutoring 
my son Nathan in the advanced mathematics, in 
return for the privilege I enjoy of giving some 
general instruction to his daughters, and he cer- 
tainly seems to be the possessor of a rare mathe- 
matical enthusiasm and ability. But beyond that 
I can tell you nothing.” 

‘‘Do you hajDpen to know anything of his past 
career.^” inquired Mr. Grafton, in an off-hand 
manner. 

“ I have not the honor of Mr. Rexford’s confi- 
dence,” replied Mr. Yorke, gravely. 

“Humph!” said Mr. Grafton, with a movement 
of impatience; “what a shame it is that a man of 
his gifts should shut himself away from practical 
life — should fall out of the race for success I” 

“What is practical life and what is success.^” 
asked Mr. Yorke, in the musing tone the children 
knew so well. 

Abstract definition was not much in Mr. Graf- 
ton’s line, but he rushed upon it with a cheerful 
confidence that was almost as good as being right. 

“A practical life, I take it, is a life given up 
to action — to deeds that men can see and that 
civilization advances by — building, mining, rail- 
roading, steamboating, manufacturing, inventing 
— anything and everything that keeps this old 


THE ARRIVAL. 


143 


world moving. And success is power, and power, 
in the nineteenth century, is money. That is 
the corner-stone of all our American prosperity. 
Where would society, politics, industries, educa- 
tion, religion itself be without money Look at 
me. I’m not what would be called a rich man — 
Jim will do better than his father — but I have a 
pretty fair fistful of stocks and bonds and that 
sort of thing, and every dollar I own represents 
so much energy — energy for the good of the 
community, energy at work for the interests of — 
of the race, if you like to put it broadly. I’ve a 
weakness for broad views myself. Now I’m a 
busy man, full of projects — spend a good share 
of my life in the steam-cars, send more telegrams 
than I write letters. But besides my personal 
business. I’m on a dozen boards and committees, 
political, charitable, educational — all sorts. I’m 
a leading citizen. In my own section, sir, I have 
my thumb in pretty near every pie that’s baking, 
and whatever I put my hand to, that thing goes 
through. Now I call this living — I call this suc- 
cess. What do you call it.^” 

Mrs. Yorke emitted a faint murmur of admira- 
tion. Her husband, his head resting on his hand, 
looked steadily into the fading embers, for the 
boys had forgotten to replenish the fire. Hence 
all the faces were in shadow. 


144 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Do you read.?” asked Mr. Yorke, quietly. 

“Why, yes,” returned the man of action, with 
briskness; “of course I do — two or three daily 
newspapers, besides the Sunday extras. And once 
in a while I take an airing in the field of general 
literature, with some such author for company 
as — as” — 

“Plato.?” suggested Mr. Yorke. 

“Well, Rider Haggard is rather my favorite,” 
admitted Mr. Grafton. 

“Do you think.?” asked Mr. Yorke, again. 

“Think.? What with worries and hurries and 
schemes and calculations, it’s a lucky week when 
I get through it without a nervous headache. I 
tell you. I’m a champion thinker. That’s the way 
I’ve made my money.” 

At this point in the conversation Nick’s drowsy 
head slipped off his mother’s knee to the floor, 
whereupon Robert, rising good-naturedly, set his 
small brother upon his shoulder and carried him 
up-stairs to bed. Mrs. Yorke followed to undress 
the tired little man and softly scratch his pillow 
until he fell asleep, for the child always insisted 
upon this peculiar variety of lullaby. 

“Yes, sir,” repeated James Grafton; “I have 
done the thing I said I would do. I have lived 
the life I meant to live. Without vanity, I think 
I am entitled to call myself a successful man. 


THE ARRIVAL. 


145 


Come, now, give me your side of the question. 
You’ve not concerned yourself greatly with busi- 
ness, I take it ? ” 

Maurice Yorke colored painfully and answered 
with hesitation — 

“Buying and selling have always been repug- 
nant to me, yet once I invested a few hundred 
dollars, all I had, in a little bookstore and came 
out of the venture bankrupt in less than six 
months’ time. I would not sell inferior literature, 
however much my customers — my would-be cus- 
tomers — called for it, and the best books I often 
gave away so as to make them known to the souls 
who needed them. There were people who had 
new horizons of thought opened to them during 
those six months ; there were people who formed 
a taste for noble reading, but — yes, financially 
it must undoubtedly be counted a failure. It 
was the winter when Rob and Nat — they were 
little boys then — had but one overcoat between 
them. My wife remembers it.” 

“Humph!” said Mr. Grafton; “what else have 
you tried ? ” 

“More occupations,” replied Mr. Yorke, sadly, 
“than I could recall if I would, or would if I 
could. For several years I was a teacher, but the 
committee found me irregular in my methods, and 
my boys, though it was conceded that they came 


146 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


to love learning as few boys do, used to have 
trouble with their college entrance examinations. 
The committee urged me to pay more regard to 
technicalities, and for the sake of my family I 
made the effort ; but finally they asked me to 
resign. I dare say they were in the right. I 
always found them patient and courteous. But 
I was sorry to give up my school. I have been 
adrift, in a sense, ever since. I have held editor- 
ships, but never for long at a time. I could not 
resist trying to elevate the popular taste, instead 
of gratifying it, and so the sales fell off. At one 
time I was private secretary to a distinguished 
politician, but as I refused to take down from his 
dictation letters which connived at wrong doing, 
he lost his temper and dismissed me. Then I 
entered upon a like position with a college presi- 
dent, a man of much scientific scholarship, but 
with absolutely no sense of English style. I used 
to correct his rhetoric to such an extent, though 
invariably for excellent cause, that he failed one 
day to recognize as his a circular which he had 
previously dictated to me, and he dissolved our 
connection. I am sorry to remember the lan- 
guage which he used on that occasion. But I will 
not weary you further. These few experiences 
are samples of many. Even as a proof-reader, I 
failed to give satisfaction, because I would not 


THE ARRIVAL. 


147 


conform to the present irrational standards of 
punctuation. In short, sir, I was beaten at every 
turn, and so I came here.” 

“And what in the name of common-sense did 
you expect to do here.?” asked Mr. Grafton, 
somewhat sharply. 

“I meant to write a bo.ok,” replied Mr. Yorke, 
with unaltered gentleness; “I have it on hand 
now. It advances slowly, because I am not 
always in the mood for it, and then it occasionally 
happens that my son Robert, who, with his farm- 
ing and his fishing, is — to my shame I confess it 
— the main stay of us all, comes to me with a 
request for money. If the need seems urgent, I 
lay my book aside and try to write a newspaper 
article or a magazine sketch. But the book is my 
chief concern.” 

“What’s the subject.?” asked Mr. Grafton. 

“I fear,” answered Mr. Yorke, with a touch of 
timidity in his manner, “you would not under- 
stand without fuller explanation than I can give 
you now. It is a universal history, from the 
botanical standpoint.” 

“From the what.?” demanded Mr. Grafton. 

“A universal history, from the botanical stand- 
point,” repeated Mr. Yorke. “It is my own idea 
that the life of each nation has its perfect type in 
the vegetable world, in the life of some corre- 


148 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


spondent plant, and that only as we understand 
the peculiar laws of germination, growth, blossom- 
ing and decay governing each of these prophetic 
plants, can we at all penetrate into the mysteries 
of national development. I am convinced that I 
am working at a profound and hitherto unsus- 
pected truth, but the difficulty at the outset is 
most serious. It is absolutely essential that there 
should be no mistake here, but the liability to 
error is great. The problem is, in brief, to 
determine with certainty the correspondences — 
what plants prefigure what nations. I feel the 
peril and move cautiously — very cautiously. For 
these last seven years I have merely been mak- 
ing preparatory notes. The book itself, to speak 
accurately, is not yet begun.” 

For a moment there was unbroken silence; then 
Mr. Grafton leaned back in his chair and gave vent 
to his accumulated feelings in a hearty laugh. 

“You had better let me look you up something 
to do out west,” he said; “a place in a library, 
say. How would that suit.? Not much chance 
to play the crank there, eh .? I’ll see what I can 
do for you. I’ve set many a man on his legs 
before now. You see I’m a good-natured fellow 
myself and like to give mired carts a lift out of 
the mud. But where is my young friend, Miss 
Dolo, going.?” 


THE ARRIVAL. 


149 


**Home,” responded Dolo, briefly, her hand on 
the latch ; ‘‘shall I tell father you are here.?” 

“N-no,” said Mr. Grafton, with a little hesita- 
tion in his voice; “I’ll announce myself when I 
come. Shall I be likely to find your father in 
to-morrow morning .? ” 

“Yes. In the island,” replied Dolo, and shut 
the door behind her. 

Nat, who had been leaning against the mantel 
in the deep shadow which now possessed the 
room, gave a sudden start, snatched down his hat 
from the nail under the clock and followed Dolo 
out into the keen salt air. 

“You needn’t,” came in crisp tones from 
Dolo’s swift-speeding little figure, as the long 
strides overtook her; “I’m not afraid.” 

am,” replied Nat, in a queer, husky voice; 
“I’m afraid to stay in that room a minute longer.” 

Dolo looked up curiously into her companion’s 
face. The moonlight betrayed him. 

“Nat, you’re crying,” exclaimed the girl. 

“ I’m not. I don’t care if I am. Don’t speak 
to me,” stammered back the tall, ungainly fellow, 
his voice breaking in something suspiciously like 
a sob. 

They walked on without more words until they 
reached Mr. Rexford’s cottage. A candle shone 
in a lower window. Dolo knew that Miss Lucas 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


150 

would be sitting up for her and that the greeting 
awaiting the tardy comer would be equally void 
of pleasure and reproach. The prospect was not 
attractive, and she lingered for a moment on the 
doorstep, looking away from the yellow little win- 
dow up to the calm, bright stars. Nathan turned 
silently to go. 

Dolo called after him — 

Nat ! ” 

The lad paused, but held his face averted. 

“I know something, Nat.” 

‘‘What.?” 

“A star, even if it can’t be fitted into a candle- 
stick, is better than a candle.” 

And with this oracular utterance Dolo vanished 
into the house. 


CHAPTER VII. 


WHICH ? 

I did once read in an old book 
Soil’d with many a weeping look, 

That the seeds of foul sorrows be 
The finest things that are to see. 

— Henry Vaughan. 

B reakfast was over and Mr. Grafton, 
escorted by Eric, was strolling along the 
shore. Mr. Grafton walked with his thumbs in 
his pockets and with just the suggestion of a swag- 
ger in his gait. The bare-legged boy beside him 
took short runs into the waves, splashed noisily 
through all the pools and rivulets they came upon, 
and made excited dashes for every little rising in 
the sand that indicated the presence of a snail. 
The morning dream of such snug and unsus- . 
pecting mollusk was rudely broken by the intru- 
sion of Eric’s bare toes, that strove vigorously to 


152 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


dig him up, while the snail, scrambling close into 
his shell and indignantly squirting out sea-water 
over those queer, brown, wriggling tormentors, 
burrowed with surprising strength and activity to 
get out of their way. Usually, though not always, 
the toes came off victorious, and the snail was 
kicked up into the light and left lying on the sur- 
face of the sand to get over his sulky displeasure 
as best he might. Although the sky was clouded, 
it was a fresh brave morning, and the dimpled 
surface of the sea, a quiet green in tint, flashed 
with silver edges. 

“And so,” said Mr. Grafton, “there are only 
these four families on the island — only thirteen 
souls of you all. That’s an unlucky number.” 

“Well!” said Eric, cheerfully, “we sort o’ 
count in Bessie an’ Jessie an’ Old Susannah — 
they’re the cows, you know — and Frisk, that’s 
our old cat, and the Cap’n’s dog, Majof — he’s got 
a soul — and then there’s Mr. Monk, and the hens 
and ducks. We make company of the gulls and 
sandpeeps, too, and at low tide the beach is just 
covered over with snails and sea-urchins and sand- 
dollars and jelly-fish. There are horse-shoes, 
besides, and plenty of clams and crabs, and some- 
times a seal gets caught in the surf. And at 
night it’s awful pretty to see the sand-fleas on the 
beach — they’re pho.sphorescent • — some of ’em 


WHICH. 


155 


just the loveliest green you ever saw. Oh ! we 
don’t feel lonesome — ’t least, most of us don’t. 
Mother does.” 

“ So you think your island is rather thickly set- 
tled, eh.?” laughed Mr. Grafton; “well, there’s no 
tent like content to keep one dry in rainy weather. 
Hello! What have we here .? ” 

Down from the Brimblecomb cottage came trot- 
ting a small and stormy figure, brown hair flying, 
brown eyes tearful, little arms beating the air 
like wings in time to the rapid movement of 
black-stockinged little legs. The lumbering form 
of Cap’n Noll, his big bronzed face wearing a 
distressed and apologetic expression, followed at 
a respectful distance. Half way between the 
house and the water. Baby Merry, hearing the 
pursuing footsteps draw nearer, turned at bay, the 
wee fists clenched, the tiny head erect, the soft 
cheeks flushed, the brown eyes blazing, the rose- 
bud mouth puckered and resolute, the little shoul- 
ders back, the slender black legs straight and stiff 
and the small feet firmly planted in the sand. 
The very embodiment of angry defiance, the child 
looked her grandfather in the eye, her whole atti- 
tude eloquently declaring, had there only been a 
boulder at hand for illustration — 

“ This rock shall fly 
From its firm base as soon as I.” 


154 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Now, now, chuckie, don’t be cross with 
gramp,” pleaded the poor captain. 

“You laughed at me,” returned Baby, unforgiv- 
ingly; “and you made me shed tears loud.” 

“But you were all wrong about gravitation,” 
protested the captain, “and gramp wanted to set 
you right.” 

“Wasn’t wrong,” retorted Baby; “Nick said 
so.” 

“What did Nick say.^^” asked Eric, coming up. 

“Nick said,” repeated Baby, with vehement 
little accents and gestures, “that when we jump 
up in the air, it’s our tracks i’ th’ earth that 
makes us come down again. And gramp laughs. 
But ’tis. You just look, now.” Whereupon 
Baby Merry solemnly raised first one foot and 
then the other, displaying two small prints in the 
sand. After this preliminary exercise, she gave 
a little leap upward and then said, with the 
air of one triumphant by virtue of irrefutable 
argument — 

“There! You see, Eric I jumped up an’ ’twas 
my tracks i’ th’ earth that made me come down 
again. Nick said so. Nick knows. Don’t you 
see .? ” 

“Only to hear the chuckie!” murmured her 
grandfather, fondly. 

Baby flashed a severe look at him, and the 


WHICH. 


155 


burly captain, feeling himself in disgrace, held 
his peace. At this instant Nick appeared on the 
scene and his little playmate eagerly appealed to 
him for confirmation of her very modern science. 
But Nick heaved a sigh and clasped his hands 
despairingly. 

“ Course I said ’traction o’ th’ earth. Baby 
always does get things wrong. She’s so ig’orant, 
I don’t know what I shall do. I try an’ try to 
teach her better, but sometimes I’m most discour- 
aged to death.” 

Thus deserted by her strong tower of defence, 
for one brief moment Baby looked crest-fallen, 
but promptly recovering her self-possession, she 
tossed her pretty head and, remarking in a non- 
chalant manner, ‘‘I don’t care ’bout jumping, any- 
way, an’ I’m going home to get Mr. Monk ; he’s 
nice,” she wheeled about and beheld the unknown 
form of Mr. Grafton. At the sight of a stranger 
the brown eyes widened, but being a plucky baby, 
run she would not. So she stood her ground, 
although trembling all through her little body. 
But Mr. Grafton whistled and cooed, made a rab- 
bit out of his handkerchief, and an old woman out 
of his fist and finally drew his gold watch from 
the fob and dangled it temptingly in the air. 

“Come here, sissy, and let me show you this/* 
he said, coaxingly. 


156 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Baby shook her head, but her gaze, fixed upon 
the shining, yellow, mysteriously-attractive object, 
grew eager. 

“Say me something pretty now — a little song 
or story, and I’ll open it and show you how the 
wheels go round,” proposed Mr. Grafton still 
more enticingly. 

This was too good an offer to be refused. 
Baby rose to the situation. It was not in vain 
that Grandma Brimblecomb, every morning for 
the past winter, had taught her a Scripture text. 

“What I say unto you, I say unto all — 
watch ! ” the mite recited, solemnly, and marched 
fearlessly forward, unabashed by the chorus of 
laughter, to claim her promised reward. 

Mr. Grafton, resting on his knee in the sand, 
good-naturedly snapped open his watch and dis- 
played the works, while Baby Merry and Nick 
and even Eric pressed tumultuously about him, 
but at the same time, like the brisk business man 
he was, he found opportunity to scrape acquaint- 
ance with the captain and arrange for transpor- 
tation, at the turning of the tide, to the mainland. 
Mr. Yorke had been obliged to refer his guest to 
Captain Brimblecomb, for some unaccountable 
pressure of engagements seemed to beset Robert 
and Nathan that day, and the stranger, to his 
own evident chagrin and even to Mr. Yorke’s 


WHICH. 


57 


mild surprise, had been unable to induce either of 
them to play boatman. It was arranged that Eric 
should make the trip with Captain Brimblecomb, 
and then Mr. Grafton, disengaging with some 
difficulty his valuable watch from its young 
admirers, went on his way alone toward the Rex- 
ford cottage, leaving Baby Merry, altogether radi- 
ant, tugging seaweed and brown kelp across the 
beach or hugging the slippery masses to her 
heart, while the captain, happy in his restoration 
to favor, was busily employed in turning up all 
the unsociable snails and sand-dollars he could 
find and, by way of “bringing them to the party”, 
depositing them together in a large hole Nick was 
scooping in the sand. Eric, meanwhile, had 
given his trousers an extra twitch and dashed out 
into the surf, where he was running and bounding 
like a native Triton. 

As Mr. Grafton approached the third cottage 
on the island, he was impressed by its peculiar 
dreariness of aspect. There was no hint of 
beauty about it, but there was scarcely anything 
so pronounced as positive ugliness. It was sim- 
ply blank, barren, dismal. The loose sand, dotted 
over with a sparse growth of coarse weeds and 
grasses, stretched away in a level on three sides 
from the plain, unpainted, box-like little structure, 
which was evidently a thing of walls and roof, not 


158 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


a home — something to keep out weather, not to 
keep in love. On the fourth side was the short, 
sandy slope to the beach. A dejected clothesline 
hung between two sullen poles, and an obstinate 
washbench stood up to its knees in the sand. 
The house was without blinds or curtains and not 
a living creature was in sight. 

Shallow hearts are often kind, and the vain- 
glorious man of affairs, as he remembered the 
mirth-loving, delicately-reared girl whom he had 
known and admired in his own sweeter days, had 
to draw the back of his hand across his eyes once 
and again before he stepped forward and knocked 
loudly at the cottage door. 

The door was opened by a white-haired, stern- 
faced man, whom for a moment the visitor failed 
to recognize. It was the cottager who spoke 
first. 

‘‘James Grafton! You — and here!” 

“It is Horace Rexford’s voice,” replied the 
other; “but where is Horace Rexford .^ ” 

Mr. Rexford stood silent for a full moment, his 
black eyes intently fixed, yet hardly . with an 
expression of welcome, upon his caller. 

“Since you are here, come in,” he said at last, 
and led the way back through the desolate living- 
room toward the study. 

But Mr. Grafton paused to cast a glance about 


WHICH. 


159 


him, and his face brightened with pleasure as he 
caught sight of Del, standing in an attitude of 
frank astonishment, half way down the rough 
ladder-like stair-case. The girl looked as if she 
had just sprung forth from a bath of sunshine, and 
when, under the stranger’s gaze, the play of dim- 
ples and blushes began, the room seemed to him 
no longer dull and cheerless, but flooded with the 
glow of youthful life. 

“Mary Rexford ! ” he exclaimed, involuntarily. 

“That was my mother’s name,” responded Del, 
smiling down upon him from her elevated and 
somewhat precarious perch; “I am Del.” 

“Delia,” corrected Mr. Rexford, in a voice that 
fell strangely on his daughter’s ears. “Mary had 
a fancy to give the child, who was born here, an 
island-name, and Delia is a derivative from Delos.” 

“Your other daughter bears a curious name, 
too,” said Mr. Grafton, looking about, but vainly, 
for Dolo. 

“Her name is Dolorosa,” said Mr. Rexford, still 
in that controlled voice with the unwonted depth 
and pathos in it. “She was born, as you remem- 
ber, in the days of trouble. Come into the study, 
James Grafton, if you wish to talk with me.” 

“ But I trust I shall have the happiness of 
meeting this charming young lady again, “ said 
Mr. Grafton, bowing gallantly to the ladder. 


l60 HERMIT ISLAND. 

Del’s blue eyes, the moment before alive with 
eager curiosity, overflowed with fun, and she gave 
a fascinating little nod to the stranger, as he 
somewhat reluctantly followed her father into the 
study. 

The door had scarcely closed behind them, 
before Del turned upon the ladder, which she had 
been in the act of descending, and scrambled up 
again. The little bare feet ran noiselessly over 
the planking above, and the girlish figure, trem- 
bling with excitement, stole into her father’s 
chamber. This was situated directly over the 
study, where a stove was set up for winter use, 
and a rude inlet for the heat into the sleeping- 
room above had been made by cutting a square 
hole in the floor. This hole was located beneath 
the bed, and as Del, dropping on hands and 
knees, crept stealthily toward the aperture, her 
head came suddenly in contact with another head. 
With a guilty start and dilated, frightened eyes, 
Del sprang back, bumping her shoulders, this 
time, against the bedstead, but in a moment 
she saw that the other head belonged to Dolo. 
The two sisters had detected each other in 
the attempt at eaves-dropping. Black head and 
golden head had each inflicted and received well- 
merited chastisement. 

Blue eyes and black eyes stared silently into 


WHICH. l6l 

each other. That was at first. Presently the 
blue eyes began wistfully to plead the common 
cause, aided by a soft and eager whisper — 

^‘Yes, I know it’s mean; it’s dreadfully mean. 
I hope Uncle Maurice will never know it. What 
would mamma say? O, dear! O, dear I We 
shouldn’t do such things if mamma were here 
to love us and teach us how to be good. But 
father doesn’t love us and will never teach us 
anything. And there’s so much about dear mam- 
ma herself and all her trouble and father’s being 
so strange and the way everything has gone with 
us that we really ought to know. We are grow- 
ing up and there’s nobody here to tell us. So we 
shall have to listen. It really seems as if we 
ought to. Listening would be mean sometimes, 
it would be wrong, if things were with us as they 
are with other girls — the girls in story-books. 
But it’s the very only way we can find out about 
ourselves. And father won’t catch us. And I 
guess mamma will ask God to forgive us.” 

The black eyes flashed as the crisp answer was 
whispered back — 

“ Lies ! Listening is listening, and it’s mean 
in us and wrong in us, just as it would be in any- 
body else, and we’re doing it because we want to, 
and there’s no ought about it. And we don’t 
deserve to have God forgive us. I hope we shall 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


162 

be caught and punished, because that’s only fair ; 
but I mean to listen, first, and find out all I can. 
Then I sha’n’t mind the punishing so much.” 

And the golden head and black head, after this 
whispered colloquy, bent together by sudden con- 
sent over the aperture, one of them, at least, feel- 
ing the more comfortable for its bump. 

The stranger, wearing a somewhat perturbed 
expression, was seated in the single chair the 
room afforded — a hard-bottomed, straight-backed 
chair of forbidding aspect, placed there for Nat’s 
use during his daily recitations in Calculus. Mr. 
Rexford sat on a high stool at his desk, facing 
about angrily upon his visitor. 

‘‘Who asked you to come and pry me out.?” 
he was demanding, fiercely. “I have been dead 
these fourteen years. You know it.” 

“And this looks to you like a case of disturb- 
ing sacred ashes.?” asked the other, with ill-timed 
jocularity. “Are you a second Shakespeare, that 
a fellow must forbear to ‘digg the dust enclosed 
here’, eh.?” 

“You had always something of the fool about 
you, Grafton,” returned Mr. Rexford, this time 
with more of contempt than wrath in his manner. 
“Be enough of a fool this morning to speak the 
truth and tell me why you have invaded my wil- 
derness. I can’t lend you money.” 


WHICH. 


163 

“ I care for something besides money, I’d have 
you know,” retorted Mr. Grafton, sullenly; “you 
were always hard on me, Horace. I cared for 
Mary, and if she would have married me, she 
might have been happier than she was ; but she 
loved you and you spoiled her life.” 

“I spoiled her life!” exclaimed the other, 
springing to his feet with a passionate movement. 
“It was she who ruined mine. I was an honest 
man, poor and proud and all that, moody and 
morose, if you like, but honest, not ashamed to 
look any fellow-being in the face. Did I call you 
a fool ? Then what was I, to marry a girl who 
had never known an ungratified wish in all her 
life — I, a young cashier on a salary scarcely large 
enough to pay her dressmaker’s bills ? Fool I 
There was never a man such a fool. How I 
walked the earth as if it were air, in those first 
months, dreaming of the home, that Paradise on 
earth, we were to build up together, of the per- 
fect love ours was to be, a beacon-light and glory 
in the world I I believed — the more fool I! — 
that all the evil in my bitter, cynical nature was 
melting away in the sunshine of her daily pres- 
ence. And if ever man loved woman, I loved 
Mary. I made her my idol — my religion. I 
vowed to mv own heart to deny her nothing. I 
threw the forces of my whole being into cher- 


04 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


ishing that dainty existence of hers. I never 
dropped a hint as to the limits of my income. I 
did try to give her a taste for simple life. I 
coaxed her away with me to this out-of-the-world 
island for two summons. She was blithe and 
frolicsome here, always masquerading in one gay 
costume or another. But she liked the winters 
better; she liked the concerts and the theatres 
and the merry parties. Wherever she went, I 
went with her, and was proud to see her the love- 
liest and best dressed lady in the room. We kept 
open house ourselves. There could be only one 
end to it all. The first time I tampered with the 
books, I remember, she wondered that my head 
should ache and sat by me and bathed it through 
the evening. I prayed all night long that she 
might never know. I trusted — fool, fool, fool! 
— that in some impossible way, for the sake of 
love like mine, a miracle would be wrought and 
wrong be sanctified to right. I fought off the 
shameful day as long as mortal could. I played 
the speculator’s game with the courage of des- 
peration. I was within a shaving’s width of mak- 
ing a fortune. But the tide turned. The crash 
came. Creditors pressed. Suspicion was aroused 
at the bank. The books were examined. My 
love had slain my honor, my best had proved my 
worst, and I went to prison, a man disgraced for 


WHICH. 


165 


life. Through all those convict years, I sent but 
one message to my wife. I told her that she had 
turned an honest man into a thief and that I 
would never look upon her face again. As I had 
kept my lover’s vow, I kept my felon’s oath. I 
would not see her. I would not read her let- 
ters. I would not hear her messages. And the 
week before my sentence was served out, she 
died.” 

‘‘Died! Yes, and went to Heaven, where she 
forgives her murderer,” returned the guest, no 
less excitedly; “but I will never forgive you, Hor- 
ace Rexford, never. You wronged her from the 
beginning. How was she to know — she who had 
been reared in luxury from her cradle — of the 
need for household economies and little self- 
denials.? You never made a sign. If you had 
said one word, there wasn’t a woman on earth 
who would have gone without dress, society, every- 
thing, more cheerfully than she. It was a cruel 
wrong to her, I tell you. And as for what came 
after — well, you simply broke her heart — the 
lightest, sunniest, most loving heart that ever 
beat. I have a good wife, no man a better, but I 
never knew a nature so beautiful as Mary’s, and 
you killed her. Do you suppose I came here for 
your sake .? I wouldn’t cross the street for you, 
Horace Rexford. I came to learn what you were 


66 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


doing with poor Mary’s children, and I have found 
out.” 

“What I am doing with Mary’s children,’' 
repeated Mr. Rexford, harshly, “is to keep them 
out of reach of Mary’s fault. They will never 
blot a man’s good name by their extravagant 
tastes. They have nothing but the barest neces- 
sities of life. I could not do more for them if I 
would, and I would not if I could. They do not 
know what money can buy. If their mother had 
not known, their father would be free of the 
prison-stain to-day.” 

“But breeding, education,” protested Mr. Graf- 
ton. “Would you have Mary’s daughters grow 
up like weeds ? ” 

“There is a woman in the house,” returned Mr. 
Rexford, with an impatient movement; “she 
keeps them fed and clothed. What more do they 
need ? ” 

“What more.? Everything more,” replied Mr. 
Grafton ; “what kind of a woman is she.?” 

“ How should I know .? I found her at my 
house when I went back to it. She had been 
sent by the physician as nurse to Mary and was 
staying on with the children. I asked her if she 
would bury herself with them on a waste island, 
for poor pay and less gratitude, and she said she 
would. Probably life had cheated her, too, for 


WHICH. 


167 


she has stayed here ever since and seems to want 
nothing but solitude. Yet she is a good drudge 
enough. And there is a crack-brained school- 
master, a neighbor, who teaches the children on 
the island, when the whim takes him. The girls 
are intelligent, I should judge, and healthy, and, I 
dare say, happy. I know little about them. I 
devote most of my waking hours to the closest 
mathematical study. That exacts strict attention, 
absorbs my thought and saves me from madness. 
It is the only thing left that can deliver me from 
myself.” 

Mr. Grafton hesitated a moment. 

‘‘Horace, will you grant me one favor — for 
Mary’s sake.?” 

The features of the other contracted with sud- 
den pain. “How am I to say no to that.?” he 
asked, huskily. 

“Well, then, let me tell you that I’m just 
appointed trustee of a flourishing girls’ school out 
in Colorado — I’m quite a prominent man in my 
State, I’d like you to understand — and I have the 
privilege, as every trustee has, of sending one 
scholar free. Now, will you let me educate one of 
Mary’s daughters in the school .? ” 

Mr. Rexford’s head had dropped upon his hand. 

“Oh, as you please,” he answered, wearily; 
“what is it to me.? What is anything to me.?” 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


1 68 


“And if I come on for her, with a suitable out- 
fit, will you let her go next September ? ” pursued 
Mr. Grafton, emboldened by unexpected success. 

“To-morrow, for all I care,” rejoined the father, 
looking up with strange, dull eyes ; “ but there 
are two of them. Which will you take ? ” 

“Ay, that’s the question,” responded Mr. Graf 
ton, musingly; “ which 


CHAPTER Vlir. 


FATHERHOOD. 


He that neglects a blessing, 

Though he want present knowledge how to use it, 
Neglects himself. 


— Beaumont and Fletcher. 



‘HE word had scarcely passed Mr. Grafton’s 


J- lips, before Dolo, all of whose senses were 
as keen as a wild creature’s, caught the sound of 
Miss Lucas’ step upon the ladder. Knowing that 
the housekeeper was coming to set Mr. Rexford’s 
room to rights, Dolo began, hastily but silently, 
to creep by a backward movement out from under 
the bed. Del followed, and both girls were stand- 
ing erect, with flushed, guilty faces and excited 
eyes, when the housekeeper opened the door. 
But the signs of confusion were too plain to 
escape the notice of even so indifferent an ob- 
server as Miss Lucas. She looked the two sisters 
over with a more searching scrutiny than they 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


170 

had ever known from her before, shook her head 
gravely and motioned them out of the room. The 
girls themselves had had enough of eaves-dropping 
and obeyed her gesture readily. Del fled to their 
own chamber, where she flung herself down upon 
the floor in a passion of sobs and tears, and Dolo, 
slipping out of the house, ran along the bluff, as if 
she were racing with the wind, to the lonely end 
of the island. 

Within the next hour Mr. Grafton took his 
leave, much disappointed not to meet the girls 
again, and Mr. Rexford, pacing the shore, watched 
the boat with gloomy, troubled eyes until it was 
lost in the distance. 

For several days to come, Mr. Rexford was not 
seen by any one. He locked himself into his 
study, going out, if at all, under cover of night. 
Miss Lucas set his meals, often untouched, down 
by the threshold, and even Nat received no answer 
to his knock. Del hovered restlessly about the 
closed door and listened for sounds from the silent 
room. Dolo crouched outside in a patch of tall 
grasses and watched the blank, empty window. 
But one morning, something less than a week 
after the memorable visit, there came an hour 
when Horace Rexford, by a despairing sweep of 
the arm, thrust all his papers from him and con- 
fessed himself defeated. The purely intellectual 


FATHERHOOD. I/I 

realm of mathematics, in which the self-torment- 
ing heart had been wont to lose consciousness of 
itself, had refused to shelter him longer. He 
had wrought out during the week laborious and 
intricate calculations, but he had not for one 
instant lost the sense of pain. The man acknowl- 
edged himself beaten, lifted his haggard face to 
the window, realized that the sun was shining 
and walked feebly out of his room, past the awed 
and pleading face of Del, toward the cottage door, 
where he staggered, reeled and fell fainting across 
the step. 

When Mr. Rexford opened his eyes, the first 
sight they beheld was Del’s sweet little face, full 
of pity and concern, bending over him. Some- 
thing like a smile softened the lines of the 
austere mouth, but he dropped his lids again and 
waited for strength to rise. It was a new and 
not unpleasing sensation, as he lay thus motion- 
less, to feel light, girlish touches bathing his fore- 
head and gently pushing back the masses of white 
hair. It was really Dolo who was rendering this 
service, but Mr. Rexford thought only of Del, 
confusing her face and her mother’s in his weary 
mind and vaguely wondering why the blue eyes 
should be so clouded by distress. 

From this incident may be dated a change in 
Mr. Rexford’s bearing toward his daughters, and 


72 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


a deeper change in his own spirit. He would 
sometimes say of himself, in after years, that his 
whole life had known but four successive moods. 
In early manhood he had been the soul of proud 
reserve and scrupulous integrity. During his few 
years of wedded happiness, all his faculties had 
been bent to the one task of ministering not only 
to the needs and desires, but equally to the light 
caprices of his winsome, fanciful, child-hearted lady- 
love. But from the moment when the shock of 
criminal accusation came upon him, when the del- 
icate and irregular method — as he had styled it to 
himself — by which he was striving to surprise a 
fortune, was suddenly arrested by discovery and 
blazoned abroad as theft, the sweetness of his 
ideal devotion had been turned to bitterness itself 
and he had allowed his heart no hour of relenting 
toward the girl-wife who had so innocently caused 
the wreck of his honorable career. If he could 
have watched the passion of her grief and self- 
reproach through the long, silent, cruel years of 
his imprisonment, if he could have seen, even at 
the last, the yearning in those dying eyes that 
turned at every slightest sound toward the door of 
the sick-chamber, hoping against hope for the 
face that never came, Horace Rexford would have 
earlier understood which of these twain had 
sinned against the other. But it was not until 


FATHERHOOD. 


173 


he lifted his heavy lids that summer morning and 
looked full into the troubled blue eyes bent over 
him, that the tide of the strong man’s wrath was 
stayed and slowly began to turn. The eyes were 
so like Mary’s. The last time he had gazed into 
hers was while his guilt was still known to no 
mortal save himself and then they had been dan- 
cing with merry mischief. A new vision was 
now dawning upon him — a vision ot those blue 
eyes hollow and tearful, a vision of that sunny 
face wistful and worn. He offered stubborn re- 
sistance to this unlooked-for mood of remorseful 
tenderness, he concealed it with a certain sense 
of mortification, he scoffed at it and strove to 
escape from it; but it conquered. Yet although 
the process was so gradual and in the main so 
secret, from the outset the girls felt the difference. 

Del, in whose sympathetic nature a warm, 
impulsive pity for her father had suddenly sprung 
to life, recognized the fact that his attention was 
often fixed upon her. He spoke to her as rarely 
as before, but when he heard her voice, he would 
sometimes turn and look toward her strangely, as 
if expecting to see another in her place. Once or 
twice she had observed ‘him watching her from 
the study window. Again and again she found 
his glance, stern, melancholy, thoughtful, fastened 
upon her at the table. She was pleased to be 


174 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


noticed, glad to be felt, and yet, eager as she was 
growing for the right to comfort her father, she 
did not dare make any open attempt to win his 
favor. 

Mr. Rexford’s interest in Dolo was slighter 
than his attraction toward Del, yet in those weeks 
when the conviction was crystallizing within him 
that he had but followed one error by an error 
tenfold greater, that upon the wrong which he 
had done to his trustful child-wife by unwisdom 
in love, he had heaped a crushing wrong in his 
denial of love, it was natural that, brooding over 
his long unhappiness, he should mark the dark 
little face so like his own, and wonder if such sin 
and suffering as the father’s might be in store for 
the child. “ She needs a stricter training than 
I had in my youth,” he would say to himself, and 
so it came to pass that Mr. Rexford, while still 
maintaining his habit of non-interference in regard 
to Del — for had he not, he asked himself, 
brought tears enough into blue eyes like hers — 
would often astonish the little household by sharp 
criticisms upon Dolo’s conduct and sudden pro- 
hibitions of her intended movements. 

At such times Dolo Would submit in silence, 
eying her mentor somewhat grimly, but without 
active resentment. After all, it was more divert- 
ing to be scolded than to be let alone, and Dolo, 


FATHERHOOD. 


175 


while she understood her father’s story too well, 
because of her own resemblance to him, to be 
swept away, like Del, upon a current of all-forgiv- 
ing pity — while she more or less clearly recog- 
nized the selfishness of that pride which had lain 
at the root of both his cardinal mistakes, had an 
inkling, too, of the intensity of his misery, past, 
present and to come. And to Dolo’s eyes pain, 
like helplessness, bore a flag of truce. The weak 
and the woeful were safe with her. She had 
echoed from the depths of her childish heart 
every one of the stranger’s angry, accusing sen- 
tences to her father, and yet, when she daily saw 
the signs of suffering deepening upon that father’s 
face, not even her passionate devotion to her 
mother’s memory could withhold her from soften- 
ing toward him. She began to count him in her 
thoughts with Baby Merry and the Hermit — 
those who were in need of something that she 
could give. Just what she could do for the 
gloomy and isolated man whom she had thus 
taken under her young protection was at first 
far from evident, but in time the girl began to 
find little ways of ministering to his comfort, lik- 
injr to feel, as she dusted his books when he was 
out or placed fresh flowers upon his desk, that 
her mother would be glad to have him so cared 
for. Mr. Rexiord’s keen eye quickly noted the 


1/6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


improved condition of his bookshelves and these 
shy attempts at decoration, but he said nothing. 
It never occurred to him that Dolo might be the 
good fairy of his study. He took it for granted 
that it was Del. 

Meanwhile the father, new as he was to the 
exercise of parental responsibility, did not fail to 
reflect upon the conundrum which the eminent 
trustee of the Colorado select boarding-school for 
young ladies had left to his solution. Which ? 
Since his own scanty means afforded no hope of 
an education for both the girls, unless, as James 
Grafton had obtrusively suggested, he should 
return to the -world which had disgraced him and 
should put his mathematical genius, the one 
solace of his exile, out to hire — an alternative 
impossible, unthinkable — it was evident that one 
of the sisters must be selected for advantages, 
social as well as mental, far above what would 
fall to the lot of the other. But which ? 

The more Mr. Rexford pondered upon this 
enigma, the more difficult it grew. “ If I only 
knew my children,” he sighed, wearily, “I could 
tell at once.” In the same instant it flashed 
across his mind that if he had only sought to 
know and love his children and had won their love 
and sympathy in return, there might again be the 
touch of gentle hands upon his throbbing temples 


FATHERHOOD. 


177 


— for he was rarely free from headache in these 
later months — there might be sweet and blithe 
companionship in his lonely strolls and the grace 
and tenderness of household intercourse about his 
dreary hearth. He was smitten with a sudden 
sense of loss hitherto unreckoned, a craving 
before unrecognized or disregarded. Displeased 
with his own emotions — always an uncomfortable 
situation — Mr. Rexford rose with an air of deter- 
mination from the high stool at his study desk 
and strode out into the living-room to consult 
with Miss Lucas. 

Del and Dolo were at their studies or sports 
somewhere out of doors, and Miss Lucas, in a 
large calico apron, was making ready the frugal 
dinner. She was filling a row of four bowls with 
milk, pouring this in from a tin pan, not without 
peril to the coarse but spotless table-cloth, when 
Mr. Rexford appeared in the study door-way. 
This taciturn gentleman was by no means in the 
habit of asking his housekeeper for advice, and 
so, sped by embarrassment, he dashed into the 
subject with undue precipitation. 

am planning to send one of my daughters 
away to boarding-school in September. I shall 
keep her there for several years. There is an 
especial opportunity offered for one, but only for 
one. Which shall it be 


178 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Miss Lucas deliberately finished pouring the 
milk into the bowls, never spilling a drop. When 
she raised her head, she displayed the same imper- 
turbable countenance that Mr. Rexford had seen 
for seven years — a countenance that altered no 
more under his startling announcement than did 
the broad, calm surface of the bread-plate. Her 
answer in its even impartiality suggested the fair- 
minded attitude of the twin-handled cracker-jar 
that stood in the middle of the table. 

If it is for several years, why not send one 
half the time and one the other half.?” 

Mr. Rexford, naturally indignant with Miss 
Lucas for thinking of so simple an expedient 
before it had occurred to him, replied with some 
asperity — 

“That would not do at all. Two halves of two 
educations do not equal the whole of one. It 
would be like giving two measures of seed in 
exchange for one measure of seed and the harvest. 
I hoped you might have some better suggestion 
to offer.” 

Miss Lucas cast her meditative glance upon a 
plate of delicious-looking gingerbread that stood, 
with a perceptible air of distinction upon it, in the 
envious shadow of the cracker-jar. 

“You might ask Mrs. Captain Brimblecomb. 
She’s very kind. She sent in that gingerbread. 


FATHERHOOD. 


179 


And she seems to take an interest in the 
girls.” 

Mr. Rexford mused upon this counsel while he 
was quietly partaking of his bowlful of cracker and 
milk, Miss, Lucas and the girls, these last coming 
in flushed and happy from their morning lessons 
with Uncle Maurice, eating in silence also. Once 
Mr. Rexford broke the stillness by an imperious 
request to Dolo not to twist about in her chair, 
but that was all. He was too much absorbed in 
his new problem to give the poor child’s table- 
manners their usual allowance of paternal fault- 
finding. Should he, or should he not, go to the 
trouble of consulting Mrs. Brimblecomb ? The 
gingerbread, which Mr. Rexford tasted critically, 
seconded the housekeeper’s proposal. If Mrs. 
Brimblecomb’s ideas were as good as her cooking, 
Mr. Rexford felt that it might be well worth his 
while to call upon her, although such neighborly 
intercourse was painfully remote from his custom. 
But he saw more and more clearly, as he con- 
sumed his spicy corner-section of the gingerbread, 
that Miss Lucas was in the right. Mrs. Brimble- 
comb was undoubtedly the woman upon the island 
to whom the little gypsies gave the most of their 
scanty indoor society, and she had had daughters 
of her own. Mrs. Yorke had sons only and 
seemed to be querulous. Mr. Rexford had always 


i8o 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


disliked querulous women. They made him impa- 
tient. With the last mouthful of gingerbread he 
decided to call upon Mrs. Brimblecomb and, being 
a man of action when his energies were once 
aroused, put his purpose into effect directly after 
dinner. 

As Mr. Rexford walked along the sandy path 
beneath the windows of the Brimblecomb cottage, 
on his way to the front piazza, he heard a shrill 
little voice protesting from the dining-room. 

don’t want any dessert, grandma. I don’t 
like dessert. But if I were a little mousie an’ had 
a wicked grandma that wouldn’t give me my des- 
sert, I’d creep an’ creep an’ creep to the pantry 
an’ eat everything in it all up.” 

“It’s naughty to talk to your grandma that 
way,” piped another child-voice, reprovingly; “I 
sha’n’t play with you, if you’re naughty. You’ll 
have to play alone with Mr. Monk.” 

“Mr. Monk is as dry as his bones,” responded 
the other and more vivacious little voice; “an’ he 
don’t know any stories to tell me ’cept just that 
one ’bout the poor pussy that was chased by a dog 
an’ killed till it was dead. You read me that 
book you writed about the bokhart.” 

And a wan ghost of the amused smile that had 
not been seen on Mr. Rexford’s face since Del 
was a prattling baby flitted across his eyes and 


FATHERHOOD. 


I8l 


lips, as the second voice obediently began in a 
serious-toned recitative — 

The Best History of Bokhart Town. 

IN TWO VOLUMES. 

BY THE AUTHOR, NICHOLAS YORKE. 

VOLUME ONE. 

IN SEVEN CHAPTERS. 


CHAPTER I. 

BOKHARTS DISCOVERED. 

One day a man’s little boy said that he wanted the alphabet in 
blocks as you see here, ABCDEFGHIJKLMN 
PQRSTUVWXYZ, but when he had brought them 
all home, his little boy said O was not there. So he had to go 
and find O. So he went, with some other men to help him. 
After a while, he found a round thing, which he thought what he 
wanted. So he took it up and it bit him. The men carried guns 
with them and they shot it. ‘ He is a bokhart,’ they cry. 

CHAPTER II. 

BOKHART TOWN. 

One day when a boy was walking around the country, he saw 
a lot of holes. So he went on to see what it was, and found that 


I82 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


there were bokharts in them. ‘This is Bokhart Town,’ he said, 
taking off his hat and running away. 


CHAPTER III. 
bokhart’s powers. 

The bokhart is a being very lively and very wonderful. This 
is his power — fly higher than kite, fly faster than birds, dig holes 
deeper than men, eat everything but dogs and cats, which can 
eat him. 


CHAPTER IV. 

But Mr. Rexford, coming to himself with a 
start, passed on to the piazza, where the captain’s 
wife, her cheery, rosy, kind old face wearing a 
comical look of undisguised astonishment, met 
him at the door. Yet even while, refusing to be 
seated, he was briefly making known the object 
of his call, the treble of the childish voices still 
echoed in his ears, although Nick and Baby 
Merry, with frightened, wondering little faces, 
were peeping at him silently from either side of 
Grandma Brimblecomb’s ample skirts. Nick had 
dropped upon the floor the veracious history of 
which he was sole author, printer, publisher and 
reader, and as Mr. Rexford’s eye fell upon the 
funny bits of pages, marked over with black, 
deformed capitals, the thought that nothing could 


FATHERHOOD. 


183 


make up to a father for having lost the childhood 
of his children still knocked at his heart. 

This thought came first with the old, bitter 
resentment against the prison-walls, but Mr. Rex- 
ford’s mental temper was too logical not to bring 
before him in immediate sequence a picture of 
two tiny maidens, homesick and terrified, whom 
in a dull November twilight he had lifted out of 
Captain Brimblecomb’s dory and set down upon 
the sandy beach of Hermit Island. He had 
scarcely known more of them for the seven years 
since that date than for the seven years before, 
and the latter deprivation was by his own choice 
— his own decree. This unwelcome train of 
reflection distracted Mr. Rexford’s attention and 
made it even more difficult than he had an- 
ticipated to explain his errand to the beam- 
ing-faced, roly-poly, motherly little dame before 
him. 

But before he was half through, the white head 
was nodding sagely and the chubby hands were 
making sympathetic gestures. 

see. I see. But which shall it be.? Oh, 
dear, dear, dear ! I wish the cap’n was at home, 
but he’s out fishing. He has a sound head of his 
own, the cap’n, though he’s foolish on some 
points, as men-folks are.” 

did not come to consult your husband,” 


1 84 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


replied Mr. Rexford, impatiently ; ‘‘ I came to 
consult you.” 

“Ho, ho, ho! What would the cap’n say to 
hear that.?” cried the little old lady, with a rol- 
licking laugh, shaking her plump sides in huge 
enjoyment. “Bless you! He thinks the sun 
rises and sets for him and his lobster-pots. It’s 
mostly the way with men-folks. But they can’t 
help it, I guess. It’s in the grain. And so you 
came to consult me. That’s what I call real 
neighborly, now. I wish you were taken this way 
oftener. Sit right down on the steps and have a 
glass of raspberry shrub, while we talk it all over. 
Do, now.” 

Mr. Rexford hesitated and then, to his own pro- 
found astonishment, consented. The children, 
made happy by two clam-shells full of the bright- 
colored fluid, retired with Mr. Monk to the fur- 
ther side of the piazza, but continually reappeared, 
like April sunshine, peeping with speculative eyes 
around the corner of the house at this most 
remarkable spectacle of the island ogre sitting 
peacefully on the steps, with a red-stained goblet 
in his hand, and listening with grave attention to 
Grandma Brimblecomb’s rambling, smiling, inno- 
cent chatter. 

But Mr. Rexford did not find it easy to obtain 
from his loquacious hostess any definite expres- 


FATHERHOOD. 


185 


sion of opinion. At last, pressed for an answer, 
she said, reluctantly — 

“Well, Mr. Rexford, on the whole and take it 
all in all, I should choose Del. She’s one to 
make her way among strangers anywhere. That 
she is — the pretty dear! To be sure, the cap’n 
will miss her. We all shall, for the matter of 
that, but the cap’n dotes on those blue eyes of 
hers. But if you should send away Dolo, I don’t 
know, between you and me, what our Baby there 
would do without her. She would cry her little 
heart out, it’s likely.” 

Mr. Rexford was conscious of an unexpected 
thrill of pain at this advice. It suddenly occurred 
to him that his own house would be lonely with- 
out Del. He knit his brows, as he replied — 

“But you are considering the question from 
your own standpoint, Mrs. Brimblecomb, not from 
that of my daughters. I wish to learn which of 
them would probably profit more by education — 
not which your household would miss the less.” 

“Sure enough,” assented Grandma Brimble- 
comb, soothingly; “human nature is just as seh 
fish, in the natural state, as lobsters are green. 
Dear, dear I But this is perplexing enough. Now 
you do this, Mr. Rexford. You go right along 
over to the next house and ask Mr. Yorke. He’s 
the one to tell you which of the girls would set 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


1 86 

most store by schooling. Hasn’t he been their 
teacher all these years.!* And that man’s judg- 
ment — bless you — I never knew a man with more 
judgment ! He always has a good stock on hand 
for his neighbors, too, because he never by any 
chance spends the least grain of it on his own 
affairs. Poor Mrs. Yorke! But then — dear me! 
She uses the wrong tackle with the man. Now 
you go straight along and ask him.” 

Mr. Rexford was not accustomed to being told 
to go straight along and do anything, but the 
justice of consulting the children’s teacher was 
evident. Yet he had already strained his new 
sociability nearly as far as it would bear, and the 
look that he cast toward the further cottage, as he 
strode down the Brimblecomb steps, was not of a 
reassuring character. It so happened, however, 
that Mr. Yorke was at that moment strolling 
along the beach in his slow, reflective fashion, this 
being one of the numerous holidays observed in 
the Go-As-You-Please Academy, and Mr. Rexford, 
catching sight of the gentlemanly, stooping figure, 
with the hands clasped behind the - back, turned 
and followed it with determined steps. The inter- 
view between the two men was briefer, however, 
than the consultation over the glasses of raspberry 
shrub, and here Mr. Rexford expressed himself 
with his habitual causticness, while Mr. Yorke, 


FATHERHOOD. 


187 


turning those deep, wise, tender eyes ©f his upon 
this neighbor whose face he had been wont to see 
scarcely oftener than that of the Hermit, listened 
without interruption to the abrupt and bitter 
sentences. 

“ I brought them here to sequester them from 
the vanities and falsities of the world, and now I 
have been fool enough to promise to undo half my 
work — to promise that one of them shall be sent 
back. You ought to be able to tell, you who have 
wasted so much breath in teaching them what 
they were as well off not to know — for when did 
learning ever make one man good and happy — 
much less a woman ? Oh, not that I fail to 
recognize your kindness in the matter — but all 
life is such child’s play — yes, you ought to be 
able to tell, I say, which of these wild Arabs of 
mine is the more ready to inherit that budget of 
prejudices and ignorances known as a modern 
education. I am not a patient man, sir, and I 
beg of you to make your answer to the point.” 

Mr. Yorke reflected silently, while several great 
waves flowed and ebbed. Then he said — 

“Since you ask for a direct answer, I should 
advise you to send Dolo. The child has a keen, 
truth-loving intelligence, and she needs more 
inlets of life. Del is equally capable, though on 
different lines, but hers is a nature that gathers 


i88 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


joy, as a bee gathers honey, from any field it 
ranges.” 

Mr. Rexford was again surprised to detect in 
himself certain stirrings of pleasure or, at least, 
relief at this counsel, which he would have 
accepted on the spot, but Mr. Yorke was still 
pondering the question, as if unsatisfied, and sud- 
denly spoke once more. 

<‘A word has come to me, my friend. There 
is one way, and but one, to invest this single gift 
with double grace. Leave the choice to the girls 
themselves. Then will the one who goes be 
favored, but the one who stays will be blest. 
Ah, yes ; that is the only way. Be guided by my 
intuition here, dear sir. Leave the choice to the 
girls themselves.” 

Mr. Rexford tapped his foot discontentedly 
upon the hard sand. 

“But what does it matter to me.?” he said. 
“What does anything matter to me.? That way 
is as good as another. I will leave it to them.” 


CHAPTER IX. 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 

The wand’ring moonj 
Riding near her highest noon, 

Like one that had been led astray 
Through the heaven’s wide, pathless way. 
And oft, as if her head she bowed. 
Stooping through a fleecy cloud. 


— John Milton. 



ET it was not for several weeks yet — not 


^ until the time of full moon had come 
again, that Mr. Rexford broached the question to 
his daughters. Meanwhile they had been wait- 
ing, wondering, expecting — Del with a buoyant, 
hopeful curiosity, Dolo with a sick foreshadowing 
of disappointment. They had spoken together of 
the matter once, and only once. It was a 
sultry afternoon, sultry even on the island, when 
Del, almost stumbling over her sister, who was 
lying in the tall grass under the shadow of the 
house, had dropped down beside her and, nest- 
ling her golden Eead against the unresponsive 


190 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


little shoulder, had whispered, with a scared 
glance in the direction of the study window — 

“Dolo, do you suppose Miss Lucas told father 
that we listened at the hole and so he decided not 
to send either of ns to school.''" 

But all the satisfaction Del obtained was the 
languid query in response — 

‘‘What’s the use of supposing.? Besides, it’s 
too hot.’’ 

The evening on which the interview finally 
came was the evening when the girls were least 
expecting it. They had lingered about the room 
for a few minutes after tea, but Mr. Rexford, who 
had been standing in the doorway gloomily 
regarding the play of delicate rose-tints and pearl- 
tints in the western sky, had suddenly turned, 
looked at his daughters with a frowning glance, 
chidden Dolo for her awkward posture and dis- 
appeared within his study. As it was the rarest 
of events for that study door to open again, after 
once closing for the evening, the children had 
started out to solace themselves for hope deferred 
by the social attractions of the island. The Brim- 
blecomb cottage was the one honored by their 
presence, and here they passed a merry hour, pop- 
ping corn over the open fire with the rosy, smiling, 
indulgent grandma, while Cap’n Noll, big and 
brown and blustering, sat by and stoutly told the 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


I9I 

most impossible sea-stories to which the elasticity 
of human imagination could be stretched, and 
Baby Merry trotted about with shining eyes, 
absorbed in vain attempts to induce first Major 
and then Mr. Monk to partake of the flaky ker- 
nels that her daring little fingers snatched hot 
from the popper. 

Then came the patter of bare feet over the 
piazza, the ring of boyish voices on the air, and in 
trooped the army of the house of Yorke, Eric, his 
bright face glowing with eagerness, leading the 
way — 

‘‘Such a jolly moonlight night! And the tide 
getting higher every minute ! What are you all 
indoors for ? ” 

“Fact!” added Nat, who came second in the 
file, knocking off Eric’s cap with one hand and 
removing his own with the other; “prettiest full 
moon I’ve seen for — for a month ! ” 

Robert, who brought up the rear, said nothing, 
but he pulled off his old straw hat, the brim now 
gone entirely, to Grandma Brimblecomb and the 
girls, nodded to Cap’n Noll, stooped and kissed 
Baby Merry, who allowed no other one of the 
elder boys to take that liberty, patted Major 
and even gave Mr. Monk’s cotton-flannel tail a 
friendly tweak in passing. 

“ But where is my little lad } ” asked Grandma 


192 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Brimblecomb, while Baby Merry, pouting, ran and 
threw open the door, which Robert had closed 
behind him, and peeped with expectant little face 
out into the dusk. 

“Sure enough!” replied absent-minded Nat; 
“where is the kid ? ” 

“Nice sort of brother you are!” laughed Eric. 

Grandma Brimblecomb glanced anxiously at 
Robert. 

“ Nick is ailing to-night. Grandma,” the big fel- 
low said, smiling down into the faded, kindly eyes 
with his own frank look; “and that’s the reason 
why I came over. There’s no trusting Nat with 
a message, and to-night the moonshine has gone 
to Eric’s head. But Nick’s throat is bad again, 
and mother is so worried I thought maybe you 
would run over and take a look at the little chap, 
just to make mother rest easy.” 

“Go, grandma, go and make Nick well,” en- 
treated Baby Merry, tugging importunately at her 
grandmother’s skirts. 

“Oh, it’s nothing, chick-a-dee,” said Robert, 
lightly, lifting the child up to his broad shoulder ; 
“Nick will be all well in a day or two. And you 
will be a good girl and let gramp put you to bed, 
while your grandma comes home with me and 
makes poor Nick better, won’t you.^^ That’s a 
dear.” 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


193 


But Merry’s devotion did not extend to such 
lengths as this. 

“No, I won’t,” she answered, promptly, resting 
her pink cheek demurely against Robert’s brown 
hair; “but I’ll let gramp wrap me all up warm in 
his jacket and carry me down to the shore to see 
moony. And I won’t be naughty all the while 
grandrna’s gone, for gramp can’t manage me.” 

And with this concession the family were 
forced to be content. 

The popcorn being speedily disposed of, largely 
by dint of Eric’s manful exertions, a procession 
was formed for the beach, Cap’n Noll leading the 
way with his imperious. little granddaughter in his 
arms, and Mr. Monk in hers. Major keeping close 
to the captain’s heels, Eric following with Del, 
and Nat with Dolo. Robert, upon whose strong 
young arm Grandma Brimblecomb was leaning, 
guided the old lady’s steps toward his home by a 
higher path than that which the others had taken, 
so that the two parties were soon separated. 

“Good-by, Rob!” called Eric, cheerfully; “telk 
Nick it’s an awful shame he can’t see this moon- 
light and this tide.” 

“You talk as if you were chief ticket-seller for 
Nature’s show,” laughed back Robert; “better 
put more of your admiration in your eyes and less 
in your tongue.” 


194 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“That’s what a fellow gets for being poetical/' 
remarked Eric to Del, with a comical attempt at 
a sigh; “he gets snubbed by the cold world — 
’specially his own folks.” 

“Never mind; it would take a deal of snubbing 
to kill you,” returned Del, reassuringly; “but 
don’t try to be poetical, you harum scarum boy ! 
It doesn’t seem natural, not one bit.” 

“Do you like me as well as if I were poetical ? ” 
asked Eric, whom the moonlight appeared to have 
struck with sentimentality. 

“ I like you best of all when you whistle,” 
replied Del, with wisdom beyond her years. 

And the air resounded at once with the melody 
of “ Marching through Georgia ”. 

“Why didn’t j/ou take grandma to Nick.?” 
asked Dolo, sharply, of Nat, nodding her head in 
the direction of Robert’s retreating figure. 

“Well!” stammered Nat, in his dazed fashion, 
“you see — you see — Rob has rather the monop- 
oly of that sort of thing and I don’t like to inter- 
fere. He does the righteousness for the family, 
just as Eric does the beauty. Nick — he does 
the innocence so far, and I — I’m o-oing to do the 
deliverance.” 

“What do you mean by that.?” demanded 
Dolo. 

“What I say,” returned Nat, stammering no 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


195 


longer and with the haze in his eyes dispelled by 
a sudden flashing look; “I’m going to get off this 
pin-point of an island before I’m many months 
older, and then I’ll somehow fix it for the rest of 
’em to come, too. Rob’s idea of virtue is to 
stand everything. Mine isn’t. Mine is to do 
something.” 

“ Do you remember the moonlight path we 
saw last month.?” asked Dolo, abstracted in her 
turn. 

“Yes,” said. Nat, gloomily; “but it didn’t come 
to anything. Nothing comes of itself. One has 
to make things come.” 

“The company will now sit down!” shouted 
Eric. 

“Sit down!” echoed Baby Merry, fiercely. 

And down upon the sand they dropped, one and 
all, like so many upset ninepins. 

“Now, moon, come out from behind those 
clouds,” called Eric, the showman; “we’re all 
waiting.” 

“ Come right out, moony,” chimed in his piping 
second. 

But the moon took her own time of state, and 
even Eric was forced to wait with what patience 
he could command. 

It was a night superb in beauty. The sea was 
silvery, the cloud-flecked sky pale amethyst. Sud- 


196 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


denly the full-orbed moon, bursting through a rift 
in the tremulous cloud-curtain, overflowed all the 
heaven with radiant beams. 

“It’s like the sun drawing water,” said Dolo. 

“No, no,” said Del, eagerly, but half under her 
breath; “don’t you see.? Doesn’t anybody see.? 
‘The heavens opened and the Spirit like a dove 
descending’ — it is like that.” 

And then they all kept silence for a little, until 
Baby Merry was moved to make the hopelessly 
mundane remark — “Moony has cloudy bangs,” 
when the silence was shattered against a peal of 
laughter. 

There was not much talking, however, even 
after that. A little jesting came to pass at Eric’s 
expense, when Del, asking him to sit on the other 
side of her to keep the wind away, was puzzled by 
the ungallant hesitation of her usually most blithe 
young cavalier. The fatal fact finally leaked out 
that the boy was reluctant to turn toward her the 
left side of his face, because it had across the 
ruddy cheek a disfiguring scratch, received that 
morning from the claws of the sedate old Frisk, 
who had her limits beyond which teasing would 
not be tolerated. 

“That’s the way with you good-looking people,” 
growled Nat, while the girls laughed softly and 
poor Eric hung his discomfited head and blushed 


3N THE MOONLIGHT. 


197 


crimson; ‘‘what would you do if you had to carry 
round my homely phiz all the time, eh.?” 

Then Nat, having growled his growl, good- 
naturedly rolled Eric over in the sand and as- 
sumed the office of wind-umbrella himself. 

But in general there was a quiet tone upon the 
little conversation that was passed, and not much 
laughter, the wonderful beauty of sky and sea 
solemnizing the sensitive young hearts. Even 
Baby Merry felt the spell and startled her grand- 
father, against whose breast her little form was 
snugly nestled, by the sudden inquiry — 

“ Gramp, is God’s last name or God’s first name 
Hallowed.?” 

“What, chuckle.?” asked Cap’n Noll, in dismay. 

“Grandma always says,” explained Baby, “Hal- 
lowed be thy name. She says it to God. Now 
I want to know if his name is God Hallowed or 
Hallowed God.” 

“His name is just God, dearie,” said Cap’n 
Noll, patting the little hand that grasped his 
rough coat-collar; “you’ll understand when you 
are older.” 

“No, I don’t,” said Baby, after a moment’s 
pause; “I’m older now — a little — and I don’t 
understand.” 

There were signs of tears in the sleepy voice 
and Dolo held out her arms. 


198 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


‘‘Come and tell me a story,” she said, with that 
quiet authority of hers to which the perverse little 
maiden always so gladly yielded. 

But as Baby Merry, resting contentedly within 
the slender arms that clasped her not too tightly, 
began in a dreamy chant to relate such heaven- 
legend as her childish imagination conceived 
under the influences of the night, Dolo rocked 
slowly back and forth, until the drowsy murmurs 
softened into silence. 

“Christ flewed up to Heaven, flewed an’ flewed 
an’ flewed, an’ there he met Angel of Lord, an’ 
there was shining stars (bars, tars, ars) an’ there 
was pretty moony (loony, doony, oony) an’ Angel 
of Lord said, ‘Praised be you — praised be you 
■ — praised be you for these beauties ! ’” 

“Let me take her now,” begged Cap’n Noll, in 
a gusty whisper; “she’s fast asleep and she’s too 
heavy for you.” 

“In a minute,” replied Dolo, waiting until the 
moon had passed behind a cloud heavier than the 
rest. Then in the partial darkness she pressed a 
hasty kiss on the moist weaves of soft brown hair 
and gave over the little burden to the captain’s 
eager hold. 

After this they all sat silent, watching for the 
moon to reappear. The great cloud seemed to 
throb with its secret of glory. Its translucent 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


199 


walls took on changing tints of crystal, pearl and 
silver. The sky beyond was hushed in expect- 
ancy. The further edges of the cloud began to 
shimmer, to shine, to burn in golden splendor 
against the surrounding night. A flood of purest 
light heralded the queenly coming, the bright 
cloud-edges melted and dazzled away, and the 
moon was visible once more — speeding in seren- 
est, most majestic beauty across a lake of sapphire. 

“ ‘ The moon doth with delight 

Look round her when the heavens are bare 

quoted a sweet, grave voice behind the group. 

Uncle Maurice!” cried Del. 

Papa ! ” exclaimed Eric. 

Then as they all glanced up toward him, they 
saw how white he looked and weary. He turned 
away from the children to Cap’n Noll. 

“I have just taken your kind wife home, sir,” 
he said, lowering his voice, which was never loud, 
as he observed the sleeping child in the captain’s 
arms. My poor little son has had an attack of 
acute distress and difficulty in breathing, and as 
his mother was nearly beside herself with anxiety, 
I do not know what we should have done without 
the invaluable aid of Mrs. Brimblecomb. I am 
much to blame. I am much to blame. I should 


200 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


have seen to it that the boy was in a better cli- 
mate before this. I should at least have put my 
family within reach of a physician.” 

Del was on her feet in an instant, nestling to 
Uncle Maurice’s side and clinging to his hand. 
But Dolo shrugged her shoulder and said in a 
mocking undertone to Nat. 

“ Your father always says that when Nick has 
one of his gasping spells. This is the third time 
I’ve heard him since Christmas.” 

“If you were a boy, I’d fight you,” returned 
Nat, between his teeth, flushing in the moon- 
light; “since you’re a girl, I can only clear out. 
Good-night.” 

And Nat, scrambling to his feet in hot displeas- 
ure, started off across the sands for home, where 
he found Eric already arrived and kneeling affec- 
tionately by the side of a pallid-faced little figure 
that rested across Robert’s knees, the mother, her 
gray hair falling loose, supporting the small head, 
while she herself was supported by the stalwart 
arm of her eldest son. 

Meanwhile Mr. Yorke was gazing with troubled 
eyes out upon the glorious panorama of sea and 
sky, reiterating to Cap’n Noll, in words of whose 
utterance he was himself hardly conscious, his 
appreciation of Grandma Brimblecomb’s services. 

“Ay, the little woman — she’s a tidy craft for 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


201 


any sea,” said the captain, cheerily, rearing his 
great bulk to an erect posture with the tenderest 
care not to awaken the baby-girl on his arm; “an’ 
as for doctorin’, you don’t easily find her beat. 
She used to be in charge o’ the medicine chest, 
when we were both spryer than we are now an’ 
she made the voyages with me, and the men liked 
to be sick better than not — the lazy lubbers! 
Oftentimes, like enough, ’twas essence o’ rope’s 
end they needed more than any of her cherry 
cordial or blackberry syrup — but what’s the odds.? 
The ship was no loser, in the long run. There 
never was danger o’ mutiny on a craft that carried 
the little woman. Not that I would say all this 
to her, mind you. A man must be master in his 
own house, as on his own deck, an’ I make a point 
o’ never letting the women-folks get the upper 
hand.” 

Then Cap’n Noll rolled away to his cozy cot- 
tage, Uncle Maurice turned sadly homeward, 
and Del and Dolo, finding themselves left alone, 
decided that it was time to seek their own domi- 
cile. They walked a little apart, and silently, as 
their custom was. Del was divided between pity 
for Nick and sympathy with Uncle Maurice, Dolo 
was remembering, with a smile at the corners of 
her strange little mouth, Nat’s flash of anger, and 
yet the thoughts of both were vaguely enveloped 


202 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


in a certain ever-present consciousness of the 
beauty of the night. For once, neither was 
thinking of the revelations and possibilities result- 
ing from Mr. Grafton’s visit to the island. 

When they reached their door, Del lightly 
lifted the rude latch and, with one of her natural 
courtesies, stepped aside to let Dolo enter first. 
In sudden freakishness, Dolo slammed the door 
behind her and held down the latch from within. 

“Let me in!” called Del, indignantly, pushing 
against the door. 

“Say the table of thirteens backward,” de- 
manded Dolo. 

“I won’t,” replied Del, in a passion. 

“You shall, and you shall say the column of 
English kings upside down, besides,” returned the 
too-ingenious warder. 

“Please, Dolo,” was the only response from 
without, but in a tone whose pathos, though fail- 
ing to stir the wicked brown fingers grasping the 
latch, brought help from an unexpected quarter. 

A heavy hand from out the darkness smote 
upon Dolo’s shoulder. Thoroughly frightened for 
once, the girl sprang back with a half-stifled cry 
and struck against the tall form of her father. 

“Oh! It’s you!” she exclaimed, in a curious 
tone that impressed her father as insolent; “I 
guess I’d rather it would have been a bogey.” 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


203 


‘‘How dare you treat your sister in this way.?” 
thundered Mr. Rexford, shaking Dolo with vio- 
lence as he flung her from him. Then he opened 
the door himself and drew Del in. 

Dolo, in all her life of fourteen years, had never 
known rough handling. Her father’s frowning 
looks and harsh rebukes she could bear with sul- 
len patience, but this sent the blood rushing so 
wildly through her veins that her head grew dizzy 
and her chest panted until she could scarcely 
speak. But speak she did, as she stood quivering 
with wrath, a slender black figure, in the one 
broad ray of moonlight that crossed the else 
unlighted room. 

“ I wish I were a man. I would shake you back 
again.” 

“Be silent.” 

“ I will not be silent for you. Why should I .? ” 

“ I am your father.” 

“You have insulted me. That makes it even.” 

“You are impertinent.” 

“Is it impertinent to speak the truth.?” 

“It is impertinent to speak truth or falsehood 
in that tone.” 

“It’s the same tone you shook me in.” 

“I was punishing you for doing wrong.” 

“You did wrong yourself.” 

“You are speaking to your father.” 


204 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“I’m speaking to the man who went angry and 
shook me.” 

At the bottom of all his pride, Mr. Rexford had 
a keen sense of justice. The explosive sentences 
from that defiant little figure in the moon-beam 
failed to exasperate him. On the contrary, they 
suggested to the newly-awakened fatherly sense in 
his heart a desire to deal fairly by the child. 
And so, with a masculine faith in the power of 
pure reason, he put to test the saving grace of 
logic. 

“Listen to me a moment, as quietly as you 
can. Didn’t you do very wrong to shut the door 
upon your sister ? ” 

“No, sir; not very wrong. She was only teas- 
ing,” interposed Del, eagerly. 

“Was it wrong or right, Dolorosa.?” pursued 
Mr. Rexford. 

“An imp in me did it,” said Dolo, sullenly; 
“and you shook him, and he’s grown into a 
devil.” 

Mr. Rexford felt his logic disconcerted. He 
hesitated and then, with a sudden revulsion of 
feeling, said in a despondent tone — 

“You are right. I am unfit to guide you. 
Rut try for vour mother’s sake to do as she would 
wish.” 

The slender figure in the moon-beam wavered. 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


205 


then made a sudden step forward into the shadow. 
^‘I think she would wish me to ask your pardon — 
and Del’s.” 

This was so extraordinary, coming from Dolo, 
that Del sat down on the edge of the wood-box 
and cried in the dark. Mr. Rexford, also in the 
dark, leaned up against a cupboard and began to 
suspect that he really had remarkable governing 
ability. But no one was quite so much aston- 
ished at Dolo’s surrender as was Dolo herself. 

Under these improved circumstances, Mr. Rex- 
ford bethought him that he might do well to 
bring forward .the subject of subjects. So he 
cleared his throat impressively and began — 

“Now that this unpleasantness is well over” — 
but Dolo in the darkness was rubbing an aching 
shoulder — “for I am sure you understand. Dolo- 
rosa, that both Delia and myself” — 

“Oh, yes, yes, yes!” sobbed Del, vehemently. 
“At all events,” continued Mr. Rexford, some- 
what taken aback by the interruption, “I am as 
sorry for my passionate moment as I believe you 
are for yours. The fact is, you both need wiser 
training than any man — much less a man like my 
unhappy self — can give, or can secure for you on 
this barren little island. The opportunity has 
presented itself through the — the personage who 
visited here a while since, for one of you to be 


206 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


educated in a Colorado boarding-school of which 
he is trustee. Humph! I trust the boarding- 
school is more cultured than the trustee. But 
that is neither here nor there. This is, as the 
world counts such things, a rare chance for one of 
you. The question is — which 

In the silence that followed, each of the girls 
was sure that she heard the beating of the other’s 
heart. 

“I have consulted Mr. Yorke,” continued the 
deep voice in the darkness, “and he reports that 
you are, from the intellectual standpoint, equally 
promising. It has seemed best, therefore, since 
the question is so hard a one for me to decide, 
that” — 

“Oh, father!” interrupted a girlish tone from 
the wood-box — a tone half choked in a fresh out- 
burst of sobs — “there’s something we ought to 
tell you first of all, isn’t there, Dolo.^” 

“Go on,” spoke out of a corner the voice with 
the odd abruptness upon it. 

“We — we — we” — sobbed the spirit of the 
wood-box, “we listened at the hole.” 

“At the hole.?” repeated the deep voice, in- 
quiringly. 

“Under — under your bed,” sobbed the peni- 
tent spirit; “and we heard it all, till Miss Lucas 
came up-stairs and sent us away.” 


IN THE MOONLIGHT. 


207 


The stillness that then ensued was the most 
oppressive of all. When Mr. Rexford spoke 
again, it was very wearily — 

‘^Who am I to show you your fault.? You 
know now how little right I have to judge even 
my own children. You have overheard only what 
I must have forced myself to tell the one of you 
who is to go out into the world, where she may by 
chance, bearing the disgrace of my name, meet 
the disgrace of my story, but nevertheless you 
have done a dishonorable thing — a thing that 
shames all noble instincts. Yet it is not for a 
felon to reproach you.” 

“Oh, please reproach us, father! We’re so 
sorry, so ashamed,” moaned Del. But there came 
no answer through the darkness. 

“Which of us is to go.?” asked Dolo, suddenly. 

The answer was husky. 

“You are to decide that question for your- 
selves. Let me know when you have made your 
choice. Good-night.” 

When before in the memory of the girls had 
their father bidden them good-night .? They re- 
turned the benison timidly and groped their way 
up the rough ladder to their room, where far into 
the wee sma’ hours four sleepless eyes, two of 
them wet and two of them hot and throbbing, 
stared at the silver play of moonlight on the wall. 


CHAPTER X. 


DEL. 


But we that live in fairyland 
Nae sickness know nor pain ; 

I quit my body when I will, 
And take to it again. 

I quit my body when I please, 
Or unto it repair ; 

W e can inhabit at our ease 
In either earth or air. 


— Old Ballad. 


IX great tides had flowed and ebbed since that 



^ wakeful night when the girls lay watching 
the moon-light on the wall, and still they looked 
at each other, whenever their glances met, with 
puzzled, questioning eyes. But as the fourth 
morning, brimmed with sunshine, shone against 
Del’s drowsy eyelids, the blue eyes flew open with 
a beam of resolution in them visible through all 
the mists of dreamland. Dressing softly so as 
not to disturb Dolo, who was sleeping with the 
sheet drawn up over her face, so that nothing of 


DEL. 


209 


her could be seen but one small brown ear and a 
long black braid tossed over the pillow, Del knelt 
before the window to lift the morning prayer she 
had learned at her mother’s knee. The sky was 
brightest azure, with no flake or feather of cloudlet 
to be seen. ‘‘There’s not the least mite of any- 
thing to stop my prayer,” thought Del, gazing up 
contentedly into the clear blue arch; “if I could 
see it going up, I suppose it would look like a 
bird — a white bird, maybe. I wonder if the 
angels will hear it singing as it flies and say to 
each other — ‘Whose little human prayer is this, 
coming up to God so early in the morning.?’ And 
perhaps mamma will hear it, too, and know it’s 
mine. I hope so.” Then turning from heaven to 
earth, Del discovered with delight that it was one 
of those rarely transparent mornings when the 
coast was so distinctly outlined that even color 
effects could be discerned upon it — as the light- 
green banks sloping down to the water’s edge and 
relieved here and there by darker clumps of 
pine-trees. 

“ Perhaps by and by I shall be walking on that 
very grass, under those very trees,” thought Del, 
and her eyes glistened and smiled. 

Yet early as it was when Del ran down the 
ladder, her father had already breakfasted and 
gone. Indeed the children had scarcely seen Mr. 


210 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Rexford for the past three days. Deepest gloom 
had again invaded that moody spirit. The knowl- 
edge that his daughters had heard the story ot his 
shame revived all the old misery and bitterness. 
He would not eat with them nor talk with them 
nor meet their shy appealing looks when he acci- 
dentally came upon them about the house. He 
denied himself to Nat, he forsook his study, a 
mood of restlessness possessed him and he haunt- 
ed the western end of the island until the Hermit, 
whom he encountered on the morning of the third 
day, beckoned with his withered hand and asked 
him softly, in trembling accents — 

“Are you a fallen spirit or only a lost soul.?” 

After this Mr. Rexford hunted out a sequestered 
nook under the bluff and lay stretched there, with 
hands clasped beneath his head and haggard eyes 
staring seaward, for hours at a time. 

“Mayn’t I have my breakfast without waiting 
for Dolo .? ” asked Del, of Miss Lucas. 

“If you’ll wait on yourself,” answered the 
housekeeper, who was ironing at a board balanced 
over the backs of two chairs. Del readily 
assented and flew about like an excited chicken, 
preparing her simple morning meal, which she 
dispatched with the ardor born of a healthful 
appetite, and then ran out into the sunshine. 

The familiar boom of the tide gladdened her 


DEL. 


21 I 


young heart and she tripped down over the bluff 
to bid the sea good-morning. There it rolled, 
blue and broad and dear as ever, the brave old 
sea, and Dei danced in it and splashed the water 
with her hands and even stooped and tasted the 
salt waves with her fresh red lips, so warmly did 
she love it. And all the while she was talking 
to her friend, in a singing tone that chimed in 
sweetly enough with the music of the surf. 

“I’ll tell you a secret, dear sea,” she sung; 
“but you mustn’t tell it, not even to the gulls, for 
they might fly up and tell the clouds, and the 
clouds might tell the rainbow, and the rainbow 
might be so astonished that it would tip right 
upside down and upset all its pot of gold. Then 
there would be a golden rain all over the earth 
and I would hold out my apron and catch enough 
to get Nick a new throat and Rob an elegant 
straw hat and myself a thousand new dresses. 
Maybe I could just cut those out of the rainbow, 
though. Wouldn’t that be lovely.? I should like 
to dress just in rainbows and sunsets and sunrises. 
I wish, dear sea, if you love me, you would rise up 
high some night and drown all the gray flannel 
there is in all the world, so that I need never 
have another ugly gray flannel' frock. Aren’t 
they just hideous.? Don’t you hate to see me 
wear them.? You wear gray sometimes, yourself. 


212 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


but it’s a soft, beautiful mist-gray, and it always 
fits. My frocks never fit. Oh, but the secret! 
I almost forgot the secret. Well, it’s this. One 
of these days, dear sea, you are to take a little 
boat in your arms, very carefully, please, and 
swing it over, all across the crests of the waves, 

’ to the mainland, and then set it down softly and 
kiss it good-by, for either Dolo or I will be in it. 
You want to know which, don’t you.? So does 
everybody, but it is just the hardest question that 
ever was to decide. Before I go home to dinner 
this noon, though, I shall have made up my mind 
to something. When I’ve found out what. I’ll 
tell you. For you remember you’ve promised not 
to whisper it even to the gulls.” 

At this point in the conversation, for the sea 
was ably sustaining his part in the musical dia- 
logue, Del caught sight of Eric running along the 
top of the bluff, with little Nick, still weak from 
his night of suffering, lagging far in the rear. 

“ Eric ! Oh, Eric ! ” called Del, curving her 
hands on either side of her mouth. “ Eric ! Oh, 
Eric I ” 

“Ship ahoy!” rang back through the crisp 
morning air, and the runner, waving his cap, 
paused on the edge of the bluff. 

“Come down.” 

“Can’t.” 


DEL. 


^13 


‘‘Why not.?’’ 

“Better fun up here.” 

“ Oh, do you want me ? ” 

“ No.” 

“You mean boy! I wouldn’t come for any- 
thing. There I ” 

“You wait an hour or two. Then see what 
you see.” 

“Where.?” 

“In the sky.” 

“Oh, Eric, tell me.” 

“No. Girls are only in the way when business 
is on hand. Just you watch the sky.” 

And evidently fearing lest his resolution should 
fail, Eric took to his heels again and scampered 
out of sight, faithfully attended by his small 
satellite. 

Del looked after him with a blending of 
reproachful indignation and lively curiosity. 

“ What is he going to do .? The horrid boy ! 
I know he’s up to some mischief. If he gets poor 
little Nick into a scrape, his mother will make 
him sorry. Why didn’t he tell me .? It must be 
something pretty bad. He said I was to look at 
the sky. The sky.? Oh, pshaw! He’s going 
to fly a silly kite. It will serve him right if he 
loses it out at sea. Any way, I needn’t begin to 
watch for an hour yet.” 


214 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Under ordinary circumstances, however, Del 
would have given her playmate chase, but she re- 
membered how grave a problem she had to settle 
that morning and fell to work on it in good earnest. 

“This is the way of it if I go,” she said, mus- 
ingly. “I’ll have a lovely time on the dear old 
island all the rest of the summer and every one 
will love me very much, because I am going away 
so soon. Then in September that funny man 
who makes bows will come again, with a trunk — 
maybe two or three — all packed with nice, pretty 
dresses, and soft, bright-colored shawls such as 
mamma used to have, and hats with long, droop- 
ing feathers, and oh ! all sorts of splendiferous 
things. And I shall tell everybody good-by, and 
they’ll all cry very hard, and I shall be so sorry 
for them. Then Cap’n Noll and Eric will take 
the best dory and row us over to the coast, and 
there we’ll get into the cars and ride ever so far 
away, clean out of sight of the sea. Oh, I 
shouldn’t like that. But then it would be for 
only a little while. And when the brakeman 
called, “Colorado, Col-o-r«-do ! ” — for I remem- 
ber how they used to call out the stations when I 
was a little girl and went to New York with 
mamma — we would get out. Let me see, though. 
Is Colorado a city or a state.? Uncle Maurice 
doesn’t mind if I do forget such little things as 


DEL. 


215 


that. Anyhow, I should drive up to the boarding- 
school in a carriage, with my prettiest clothes on, 
and the principal would come running to the door 
and bow this way and smile this way” — here 
Del astonished a venerable crab by bestowing 
upon him a sweeping courtesy and a suave grim- 
ace — ^‘and would say, ‘Come right into the 
parlor, my dear ; we are waiting supper for you ’. 
And I should be so pleasant at supper that all the 
girls and teachers would love me straight away, 
and I should be at the head of all my classes, and 
probably I should learn to write poems and paint 
pictures and play on the organ and the violin, and 
I should read all the good books in the world and 
grow up into a very wise and beautiful young lady, 
with the right ways of walking and talking and 
behaving, as mamma had. Then a great many 
young gentlemen would come and ask me to 
marry them, and I should tell all but one that 
they might be my brothers, but I should fall in 
love with the handsomest and cleverest and best 
— oh ! and the richest of them all, and marry him 
and come back with him to Hermit Island, where 
we would build a magnificent great house. And 
poor father would be so proud of me he would for- 
get all his troubles, and Dolo would marry Nat, 
and Rob and Eric and all the rest would be just 
as they are now — only my husband would be a 


2I6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


doctor, SO he could cure Nick’s throat. And my 
distinguished friends — authors, actors and clergy- 
men — would come over in boats to see me very 
often> and I would go over to the coast in a sail- 
boat of my own whenever I chose, without asking 
leave of anybody. And not a shred of gray 
flannel should ever be seen on Hermit Island. 
Yes, all that would be nice. But that’s if I go, 
and not Dolo. Now I must think it out the other 
way.” 

But just here Del spied Uncle Maurice stroll- 
ing along the beach, with Nathan by his side. 
Nathan was carrying a large umbrella under his 
arm and a back-rest over his shoulder. He held a 
bottle of ink, a pen and blotter in one hand, and 
with the other based a pile of books under his 
chin. Uncle Maurice carried a thin writing-tablet 
and a few blank leaves of paper. 

As they neared Del, Uncle Maurice nodded 
smilingly and called, “You see I am utilizing my 
holiday.” 

“Oh, Uncle Maurice, are you going to write 
something ? ” asked Del, bounding toward him. 

“If the impulse comes,” replied Uncle Maurice, 
glancing at Nat, who set his lips firmly together, 
but held his gray eyes downcast; “I would not 
profane the realm of truth by thrusting myself 
into it uninvited. If I am summoned, it is quite 


DEL. 


217 . 


a different matter. But Wisdom beckons whom 
she will. She is not to be captured by force.” 

“Will it be an article for a magazine.?” asked 
Del, .capering with excitement, like the little wild 
creature she was. 

“The editor of The Eagle Review has just writ- 
ten and asked me for it,” admitted Uncle Maurice, 
not without a gleam of pleasure in the dreamy 
eyes. 

“It’s a first-rate chance,” said Nat, eagerly — 
almost pleadingly. 

“One has always a chance to witness to the 
truth,” returned his father, with a touch of rebuke 
upon his quiet tone; “what matter whether by 
speech or silence .? What matter whether to audi- 
ence of men or angels .? ” 

Nat colored and busied himself in preparing a 
little study out on the beach. He adjusted the 
back-rest in the sand, stood up the umbrella, 
which had a preternaturally long handle, over it, 
strewed the books of reference about within easy 
reach and placed the writing materials close at 
hand. 

“There, sir!” he said, “there’s a jolly little 
tent for you.” 

Then the lad hesitated, shoved his big brown 
hands down into the depths of his pockets, awk- 
wardly dragged one bare foot back and forth in 


2I8 


HERMIT ISLAND. 



the sand, and finally added, with a sudden child- 
like abandon quite out of Nat’s usual way — 
Please — please write this morning, papa.” 

“Would you, too, bow yourself in the dark 
house of Mammon, my boy.?” asked the idealist, 
with an accent of sorrowful surprise, and then 
went on, in low, murmurous voice, quoting a 
stanza of the old English poet with whom his 
nature was so much in sympathy — 

‘ Both roofe, and floore, and wals, were all of gold, 

But overgrowne with dust and old decay, 

And hid in darknesse, that none could behold 
The hew thereof; for vew of cheareful day 
Did never in that house it selfe display, 

But a faint shadow of uncertain light; 

Such as a lamp, whose life does fade away; 

Or as the moone, cloathed with cloudy night. 

Does shew to him, that walkes in feare and sad affright’.” 

“Oh, it’s not — not — not that,” protested Nat, 
stammering worse than ever in his distress, 
“though God knows we need a little money bad 
^enough just now. But no, sir; it’s not that. 
It’s — it’s — it’s something quite different. But 
please write the article, papa. The Eagle Review 
will publish it, as it did that last one, almost three 
years ago, and the editor will send you letters 
from celebrated men about it. Only the letters 
make me angry, too, for you could be more cele- 
brated than any of them, if you would.” 


DEL. 


219 


“Well, well, my boy,” said his father, sitting 
down in the sand under the umbrella and leaning 
against the back-rest ; “you are a good son, and so 
are the others, and I will try hard to please you 
all and your mother. But I feel — I feel as if the 
day were to bring me a message of silence.” 

“Confound the day!” growled Nat, when he 
had tipped the umbrella at a still more shady 
angle over his father’s head and had withdrawn 
with Del out of earshot; “if it does anything of 
the kind. I’ll- — I’ll stone the sun out of it. I 
will.” 

“Why-ee, Nathan Yorke!” exclaimed Del, 
“what a thing to say! You’ll not find a pebble 
large enough for that on Hypothenuse Beach.” 

“I notice that the sun doesn’t look much 
scared,” admitted Nat, half sulkily, half humor- 
ously; “but if father doesn’t do something pretty 
soon to prove to chattering idiots like that Graf- 
ton and to the world at large what genius there 
is in him, I shall go drown myself.” 

“Why, Nat, we all know,” said Del, consolingly. 

“I want everybody to know,” replied Nat, with 
vehemence. “He’ll never have a better chance 
than this. Oh, if only he’ll write that article ! ” 

And Nat flung himself down at full length 
in the white sand, with his sharp chin resting 
between the palms of his two hands and his eyes 


220 HERMIT ISLAND. 

intently fixed upon the little literary encampment 
under the umbrella. 

“Are you going to keep watch.?” asked Del, 
laughing. “Good-by, then. I hope he’ll write it, 
Nat.” 

“So do I,” answered Nat, in a choked voice. 
“Good-by.” 

And Del left the boy lying on guard, with his 
eyes so keen and eager that it seemed as if they 
would pierce holes through the umbrella-top. 

It was with some difficulty that Del, after this 
interruption, brought her thoughts back to the 
subject in hand. She struck out over the bluff 
across the island, and was resting on the northern 
shore, curled up in a little gray flannel bunch, her 
bare brown feet in her bare brown hands and her 
winsome, girlish face turned out to sea, before she 
fairly resumed her meditations. 

“Now I must imagine it all through on the 
other side,” she said to herself. “Supposing I 
should go to Dolo and say, ‘Dear sister’ — only 
it would seem so funny to say that to Dolo — ‘I 
want you to go to Colorado and have the educa- 
tion you would like so much, and I will stay with 
father’. Then everybody on the island would say 
hoyv noble and generous I was, and I should feel 
something singing in my heart the whole time. 
Uncle Maurice would let me read all his books. 


DEL. 


221 


and Cap’n Noll would give me his prettiest shells 
and ivories, and the boys would all quarrel to 
walk with me, and perhaps even father would love 
me for being so self-denying. Then I should live 
here years and years and years and be like Ten- 
nyson’s St. Agnes, for I shouldn’t wear gray flan- 
nel frocks any more, but always long white robes, 
and my hair would float loose on my shoulders, 
and I should lean out of my window a great deal, 
especially snowy nights, when the moon was 
bright, and look up to heaven. And people would 
come from all around to the island to see me, 
because I should be so holy. I should make 
beautiful hymns and sing them very sweetly, and 
not live to be old. I should be thin, very thin, 
and white as alabaster, and I should rarely smile, 
but I should have a serious, uplifted expression. 
And the boys would always stay with me and 
take care of me and have a great reverence for 
my saintliness. And people would urge me to 
come to the mainland, but I should refuse, very 
gently but very firmly, to leave my island home, 
and when I died, there would be a white marble 
chapel built here, with angels carved on it bear- 
ing me to heaven, just as they did St. Katharine. 
And the boys would guard the chapel night and 
day, and people would come from way across the 
ocean to say their prayers in it, and lilies and 


222 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


snowdrops would spring up all over the island. 
But I should be in heaven, with a crown of stars 
and a golden harp, and all the angels would smile 
on me. Now which would I rather do — this or 
the other.? I almost think I like this best.” 

But peace and quiet for reflective minds were 
not to be secured on Hermit Island that morning. 
A shrill scream from above caused Del to lift her 
startled gaze and then leap to her feet and throw 
up her arms in consternation. For there, a few 
rods over her head, was the uncanny vision of a 
curious, swollen, bag-like object, with a terrified 
and shrieking small boy attached. It was Nick 
himself, and that horrible, flapping, patchwork 
balloon was bearing him straight out to sea. 

*‘Oh, Nick, Nick!” screamed Del, springing up 
and down and wringing her hands; ‘‘hold on — 
hold on tight ! ” 

“I can’t let go,” piped back Nick’s shrill little 
voice. “Eric tied me.” 

In an incredibly short time the whole human 
population of the island, except the Hermit, came 
rushing to the shore. Mrs. Yorke was almost the 
first arrival, but fainted away directly. Grandma 
Brimblecomb trotting down the beach just in 
time to catch the falling form in her plump arms. 
Mr. Yorke, calm and resolute and more keenly 
practical in this emergency than his neighbors 


DEL. 


223 


had ever seen him, called cheerfully to the boy 
and pushed out with Nat in the lightest dory. 
Cap'n Noll sprang into his own stanch little boat, 
drawing Eric, who was white and dazed with mor- 
tal fright, in with him. 

“Now, my lad,” the kind-hearted sailor said, 
with bluff friendliness, forcing a pair of oars 
into the boy’s cold hands, “see if you can be as 
clever in getting the little chap out of the scrape 
as you were in getting him in. Come, here’s the 
chance to show your mettle.” 

And Eric, throwing himself upon the oars with 
a fury of energy, rowed as he had never rowed 
before. Mr. Rexford, arriving later than the 
others, found Robert madly baling out an old, dis- 
carded tub of a fishing-boat and dashed to his 
assistance. In a moment more they, too, were 
afloat, though sitting halfway up to their knees in 
water. Miss Lucas lent her aid by unceremo- 
niously picking up Baby Merry, whose screams 
were louder than Nick’s, and carrying her away 
out of sight of what all feared, though no one 
voiced the fear, must be an immediate catastro- 
phe. For the clumsy balloon had been blown out 
over the water and was settling fast. The breeze 
was capricious and tossed its queer plaything back 
and forth in a way that confused and baffled the 
movements of the boats. 


224 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


‘^Let US keep well apart,” shouted Mr. Yorke 
to the other crews; “the chances are better so.” 

“ If one only knew where the thing would 
strike ! ” groaned Robert. 

“Keep up heart!” shouted Cap’n Noll, cheer- 
ily; “that there airy machine aint going to sink 
in a minute, and the youngster will have wit 
enough to keep himself afloat by her, till we can 
get to him.” 

But suddenly a contrary puff of wind drove the 
balloon quite away from the vicinity of the dories, 
and at the same instant a piteous outcry from 
Nick was smothered in an ominous splash. The 
line that held the little fellow to the balloon had 
given way and he was struggling in the water. 

Eric, beside himself with terror, threw down 
his oars and sprang overboard, buffeting the great 
waves with splendid strokes ; the others bent 
manfully to their blades : but the boats were all 
too far away, and little Nick could not swim. 

Rescue came from an unexpected quarter. Dolo 
had foreseen this peril from the outset and, kneel- 
ing at the water’s very edge, with both arms 
clasped tight about Major’s neck, although the 
dog struggled fiercely and even growled full in 
her face, she had held him back until now. 

She had kissed him, looked into his eyes and 
pleaded with him — 


DEL. 


225 


“ Major, Major, you know you love me. Oh, 
please trust me a little longer. It is only to 
save your strength. Major. It is only so that 
you can help Nick better by and by. You must 
believe me. Major. Be 'still! Be still!” 

And the dog had trusted the voice and the 
eyes he knew and had suffered himself to be 
restrained by the bondage of those slender arms. 

But when the balloon swerved away from the 
boats, it came nearly opposite the point where 
Dolo and Major were waiting, and as the girl saw 
Nick fall, she set the dog free with a clear, bold 
cry and raced out with him through the waves, 
till the water was up to her shoulders. 

“Now for him. Major!” she gasped. “Swim! 
Swim with all your might ! ” 

The good dog needed no bidding. He plunged 
through the heavy waters as only a good dog can 
and leapt up to meet the in-rushing billow that 
was bearing the drenched and inert little body 
on its crest. 

“ He has him ! Oh, he has him ! ” shrieked Del, 
and ran with Dolo to help the nearly exhausted 
dog drag his burden in through the surf. 

The boats pulled in with scarcely less speed 
than they had pulled out. Mr. Rexford and Rob- 
ert were upset in the landing and rolled over and 
over in the surf, but nobody minded that. The 


226 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


girls were wrapt in sailor jackets, though, and 
started home on the run to get into dry clothing. 
Mrs. Yorke was revived from her fainting fit in 
time to see the first trace of color creep back to 
Nick’s rigid little lips, and Cap’n Noll, who had 
pulled Eric on board -again, busied himself in 
chafing that young hopeful’s wrists and chest. 

*‘He stands as good a chance of being ill as 
the small shaver,” said the captain, gruffly. 

“He.? He’ll never die in his bed,” retorted 
Nat, significantly; “I wouldn’t waste many wor- 
ries over him'to-day.” 

At last Mr. Yorke could look up long enough 
from the little body which he and Robert and 
Grandma Brimblecomb were all rubbing at once, 
to ask Eric, with an unwonted sternness in his 
voice — 

“And now can you tell me how this came 
about .? ” 

Poor Eric had need of all his manliness to 
restrain the tears. 

“I wanted a balloon ascension, papa,” he said, 
pathetically; “we had never had one on the 
island, and I thought it would surprise you all so 
much.” 

“It did,” remarked Mr. Rexford, laconically. 

“Let the boy alone,” growled Cap’n Noll, who 
could not bear to see his favorite in disgrace. 


DEL. 


227 


*‘And so I got some old meal-sacks down cel- 
lar,” pursued Eric, in a breaking voice, “and 
sewed them together and lined them with paper. 
Then I rigged up a little underground furnace up 
yonder, just the further side of the bluff, and I 
ran an old piece of stovepipe from it to the bal- 
loon and — and this morning I started up the fire. 
But I was too heavy for it myself, so I let Nick 
go” — 

“There’s a privilege for you,” muttered Nat. 

“But truly, papa — oh, truly, mamma,” urged 
Eric, with the big tears coursing freely now down 
the cheeks that were white through all their 
tan, “I tied another line to him and rolled the 
end of that around my arm — see — so that if 
anything should go wrong, or if the balloon should 
blow out over sea, I could pull them both back. 
But the line broke at the first tug and after that 
there wasn’t anything I could do. Nick knows I 
never meant to scare him.” 

And Eric flung himself in a passion of pen- 
itence down upon the sand beside the martyr 
of his youthful science, who smiled feebly and 
stroked his brother’s tear-stained face with a 
weary little hand. 

The group broke up soon after this. Nick was 
tenderly carried home and put to bed between hot 
blankets. The other dripping members of the 


228 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


party withdrew to find more comfortable attire. 
Mr. Yorke sent Nat and Robert over to the coast 
to fetch a physician, for he entertained the grav- 
est fears as to the effects of this excitement and 
exposure upon the child’s fragile health. Major 
was given an unusually large and delicious bone 
for dinner, and over their bowls of bread and milk 
Del said to her sister — 

“Dolo, I think you must have what Uncle 
Maurice calls the faculty of prompt decision. 
Now I haven’t. I’ve tried all the morning to 
decide whether I wanted most to go to Colorado 
or to stay here, and I can’t tell. So I’ve just 
made up my mind to this much — to leave it all 
to you, and whichever you choose to do. I’ll 
be contented and happy to do the other thing. 
Honor bright, I will. Only I’m in a hurry to 
know — so please decide it this very afternoon.” 


CHAPTER XI. 


DOLO. 

He knows not the path of duty 
Who says that the way is sweet ; 

But he who is blind to the beauty, 

And finds but thorns for his feet. 

— Richard Watson Gilder. 

D OLO listened to Del in silence, but there 
was acquiescence in the very way she held 
her spoon. Del felt relieved of responsibility and 
hurried away after dinner to inquire for Nick. 
She found a strange quiet resting on the usually 
lively household, for a family which boasts four 
boys rarely fails to make a noise in the world. 
But this afternoon all was very still. Robert and 
Nathan were away on their quest for a physician 
and could hardly be expected home before night- 
fall. Eric, awed and miserable, lay stretched at 
full length on the hard floor in front of the cold 
fireplace, his face buried on Major’s shaggy neck, 
and Mr. Yorke, with a new manliness and energy 


230 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


upon him, was seated at the kitchen table, writing 
rapidly. 

“How can you sit and write in that heartless 
way.?” asked his wife, petulantly, coming out of 
the side-room where Nick, carefully tended by 
Grandma Brimblecomb, was tossing and moaning 
in a feverish sleep. “ I don’t believe you care for 
the child at all.” 

Del’s blue eyes flashed and Eric’s curly head 
moved restlessly upon its living pillow, but Mr. 
Yorke merely glanced up to smile and answer 
gently — 

“There is nothing I can do for the precious 
boy just now, my dear, but this. You will be 
glad, one of these days, when our little man is 
running about again, and there comes a doctor’s 
bill to be settled, to find a few dollars in my 
purse.” 

Hastening home, Del communicated the tidings 
of Nick’s condition to Miss Lucas and to her 
father. They both listened with interest, for the 
glow of feeling which had made the hearts of all 
these island neighbors beat as one in that desper- 
ate struggle of the morning, had not yet spent 
itself. Miss Lucas expressed a desire, not with- 
out a hesitating glance toward the master of the 
house, to fry an extra supply of doughnuts that 
afternoon and double the quantity of baked pota- 


DOLO. 


231 


toes for supper, that there might be something to 
take over to the Yorkes, as Robert and Nathan 
would be hungry on returning from their trip; 
and Mr. Rexford not only assented to this un- 
wonted proposal, but quite took Del’s breath away 
by the suggestion that two of the boys should 
take their meals with them, until Nick was better. 
Del recognized with joyful wonder that in this 
sense of misfortunes other than his own her 
father had thrown off the dark dominion of his 
recent mood. His stern voice grew musical in 
these new tones of sympathy, and his austere 
face, with the light of friendliness upon it, looked 
to his wistful little daughter almost handsome. 
Mr. Rexford heed not have feared that his child- 
ren would scorn him for his story. The knowl- 
edge of his sin and sorrow was the one thing 
needed to fan their neglected young affections 
into flame. True to the woman nature, for blame 
they gave compassion and in place of contempt a 
yearning to console. 

Anxious to speed her message, Del ran over to 
find Cap’n Noll, but he had resorted to his cus- 
tomary expedient, when the world went wrong — 
lighted his pipe and gone out in his dory to visit 
his lobster-pots. Dolo was sitting on the piazza 
steps of the Brimblecomb cottage, trying to ap- 
pease Baby Merry, who was much puzzled as to 


232 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


why she was not allowed to go and see Nick. 
Just as Del joined her sister, the midget came 
rushing to them, screaming at the top of her voice 
and holding a wasp tightly pressed between rosy 
thumb and forefinger. The wasp was stinging 
furiously, but his dauntless little captor, though 
hopping up and down with agony, would not relin- 
quish her prize. The scientific curiosity seemed 
to assert itself within her, for she reiterated in a 
dolorous outcry, while dancing wildly about — 

‘^Ee, ee ! How does he do it? How does he 
do it ? Ee, ee, ee ! ” 

Even when the girls had struck the wasp from 
her and bound up the burning little hand in 
flour. Baby Merry’s thoughts seemed to run on 
kindred topics, for nestling against Dole’s shoul- 
der she remarked in a wise, conversational little 
way peculiar to herself — 

“ I like flowers. I like flowers mos’ as well as 
— as chairs.” 

“But you can’t sit on the flowers,” said Dole, 
absently. 

“N-no; but bees sit on the flowers,” responded 
Baby Merry, and proceeded to invent a remarkable 
legend of bees and wasps and wild-briar roses, but 
while the plot was still thickening, the drooping 
eyelids fell and the child, worn out with the 
excitement of the morning, dropped asleep. 


DOLO. 


233 


“Will you put her to bed?” asked Del. 

“No; ril lie down in the hammock with her,” 
said Dolo, and so Del, having told what she could 
of Nick, left her sister swinging softly in Cap’n 
Noll’s big seaman’s hammock, which was sus- 
pended from the posts of the piazza. Baby Mer- 
ry’s soft little face pressed close to her brown 
cheek. 

When Cap’n Noll came back. Baby Merry was 
still sleeping. After a polite inquiry or two con- 
cerning the welfare of the lobsters, Dolo confided 
the child to the captain’s charge and strolled off 
to the beach, determined to make her decision 
before going home. With her there was no 
glamour of romance thrown over the situation. 
Her keen, cool intellect recognized distinctly the 
advantage of education and of the wider life 
beyond the narrow limits of the island. She 
wanted to go. There was no doubt about that. 
The longing for a richer and more varied experi- 
ence had been growing up in her for months past. 
Until Mr. Grafton came to the island, however, it 
had been but vague and undefined desire. Since 
then it had intensified into a fierce hunger. But 
Dolo knew that if she chose to go, it would be a 
deliberately selfish choice, and under all her wild, 
freakish, sullen ways the little gypsy had a con- 
science. There was ever one constant spring of 


234 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


pure waters feeding her purpose to do right, and 
that was the memory of her mother. But to-day 
there were various special pleaders for the cause 
of generosity. The warm touch of Baby Merry’s 
face upon her cheek made her heart tender, the 
gravity of little Nick’s condition made it earnest, 
and the influence of the strong passion of the 
morning — of those wild moments when she was 
clinging with both arms to Major’s straining neck, 
made it brave. 

Dolo paced the sands until sunset, with her 
brown brows tightly knit, her thin lips firmly set 
and her black eyes glowing with changing lights 
and shadows. It was low tide, the wet beach 
gleamed in the sun and clearly mirrored the 
queer outlandish little figure, with its cloth cap, 
black braid, clumsy dress and bare feet and ank- 
les. The sand was so firm that her light steps 
made no foot-prints. The shore was ghastly that 
afternoon, however, being strewn with signs of 
death. Here were a flock of greedy sandpeeps, 
pecking at the skeleton of a skate, and there a 
swarm of flies settled thickly upon the bloated 
body of a porgy. Dolo shuddered a little as her 
glance fell on these and like traces of decay, and 
she scoured in the sand, with a look of loathing, 
the foot that had struck accidentally against a 
dead mackerel. Once she started to drive away 


DOLO. 


235 


old Frisk, who was picking up a Friday dinner 
along the coast, but checked herself. After all, 
was not Frisk doing as the voice of nature in her 
breast had bidden her, even when she sprang 
with teeth and claws upon that poor, fluttering, 
wing-broken sea-gull and left of the throbbing, 
beautiful creature only a scattering of bloody 
feathers ? This episode made Dolo, who was too 
far away to interfere, faint and sick, but she 
dropped the sand-dollar she had taken up with 
revengeful intent to fling at the cat. After all, 
every one for himself was the law of the uni- 
verse. Why should she who had so little, be 
expected to stand aside for Del, who had so 
much.? Del was born lucky, as she was born 
pretty. People always loved her. She would 
be happy anywhere. But for herself, place would 
make a difference, training would make a differ- 
ence. It was only justice that she should go. 

The skies clouded over. Showers fell at inter- 
vals, and there was a distant rumble of thunder, 
with crooked flashes of lightning. Still Dolo, 
heedless of the rain and simply shrugging that 
contemptuous small shoulder of hers at the far-off 
thunder roar, persisted in her measured walk. It 
was a hard problem that she was working out. 
The solution must satisfy not only herself, but the 
watchful spirit of her mother. 


236 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Just before sunset the rain ceased, the clouds 
rolled back and a rainbow leapt into view — a 
broad and beautiful ribbon of color, arched from 
sea to shore, one end hidden among the forest 
trees of the main-land and the other resting on 
the ocean, blending with the exquisite reflection 
of the bow in the water. That portion of sky 
and sea and far-off strip of shore framed within 
the iridescent arch was suffused with a wonder- 
fully pure, soft and gracious light, as white as 
holiness. Dolo bowed her stubborn little head as 
she gazed, and when she lifted it again, her vic- 
tory was won. 

Then the girl went home with swift, firm steps 
and found her father leaning against the side of 
the house, watching the fading traces of the rain- 
bow. Del was standing near. It was to Del that 
Dolo addressed herself — 

“It’s all settled,” she said, briefly; “I shall 
stay on the island and you will go away to 
school.” 

A great delight flashed up into Del’s blue eyes 
and the dainty rose-color flushed her cheeks. 

“Oh, Dolo, are you sure.^” she asked, breath- 
lessly. 

“Sure,” replied Dolo, in a steady voice, and 
glanced up toward her father, with a shy, wistful 
hope of his approbation. 


DOLO. 


237 


But Mr, Rexford was looking at Del and 
upon his face was an unmistakable expression of 
disappointment. 

Dolo turned away, feeling as if a sudden hand 
had smitten her on the face, and that night, while 
Del was smiling in her dreams, Dolo thrust her 
black head deep into the pillow and cried as if 
her heart would break. 

The boys, spent with anxiety and hard rowing, 
arrived an hour after sundown, bringing with 
them a physician, a quick-stepping, nervous-lipped, 
bright -eyed little gentleman, who pronounced 
Nick in the first stages of lung fever. It bade 
fair to be a serious case, but the physician, 
although he was sympathetic and kind, watching 
half of the night by the child’s bedside, could 
promise to come only every third day and then for 
no more than an hour at noon. 

‘‘Even so,” he said, reasonably enough,' “the 
trip will consume nothing short of seven hours, 
and I have other patients.” 

“You see,” said Mrs. Yorke to her husband, 
reproachfully, “this is what your notions have 
brought upon your family. The boy will die, 
my own sweet boy will die, and be buried here in 
the sand.” 

And the poor mother, sobbing hysterically, 
threw herself across the foot of the bed. 


238 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The physician, with an impatient twitch of the 
lower lip, proceeded to mix for her a soothing 
draught, while Mr. Yorke in silence passed his 
hand over the hot face of the little sufferer, who 
was already delirious. 

“Don’t lose heart, madam,” said the physician, 
as he deftly prepared the potion; “this lady 
here” — nodding toward Grandma Brimblecomb 
— “is almost as good as a doctor. I will give 
her every direction and caution possible and 
entrust a small assortment of medicines to her 
discretion. But mind you, she must not have two 
invalids on her hands.” 

The neighbors, meanwhile, were waiting about 
in the moonlight to hear the physician’s report. 
Robert came out presently and brought it to them. 
His voice trembled as he spoke and Del wished 
he were not so tall, for otherwise she could slip 
her hand into his and comfort him, as she did 
with Eric. As Robert went back to the house, 
Mr. Rexford turned to Miss Lucas. 

“Can you cook for three families.!^” he asked, 
abruptly. 

“We’ll help you,” chorused Del and Dolo. 

Miss Lucas’ dull eyes brightened. She, too, 
was glad to do a neighborly kindness once more. 

“If I have enough to cook,” she answered, 
simply. 


DOLO. 


239 


Mr. Rexford smiled grimly. “We’ll see about 
that,” he said; “it’s a shiftless pocket that doesn’t 
carry a penny for a rainy day.” 

Then he addressed himself, a little stiffly, but 
with an obvious desire to be cordial, to Cap’n 
Noll. 

“ Since your good wife appears to be installed 
as head nurse. Captain Brimblecomb, I hope you 
and your little granddaughter will accept the hos- 
pitality of my table for the present, though I warn 
you that you will find it a very plain and rugged 
hospitality.” 

Del glowed with pride in her father’s unex- 
pected munificence, Dolo eyed him curiously and 
Cap’n Noll, feeling greatly flattered, expanded his 
big chest and chuckled aloud with pleasure. 

“Thank you hearty,” he said, with a resound- 
ing slap upon his thigh ; “ I take this uncommon 
kind of you, sir. Hang me from the mast-head if 
I don’t. As for the fare, a man who once lived 
on a raft for six blessed weeks, with nothing but 
half a dozen of mouldy sea biscuit and a few raw 
flying-fish to eat, aint likely to turn up his nose at 
shore victuals. We’ll mess with you glad and 
cheery on one condition, sir, and that is, that you 
let me chip in my share o’ the — o’ the rough 
material, so to speak, lobsters an’ flour an’ clams 
an’ sech.” 


240 


HERMIT ISLAND 


Miss Lucas nodded in approval and Mr. Rex- 
ford laughed a little to himself. His daughters 
both started. It was the first time within their 
memories that they had heard their father laugh. 
But in his happier days Mr. Rexford had been a 
shrewd and appreciative observer of men, and it 
pleased him now, in his more genial mood, to look 
upon Cap’n Noll as he stood before him, the 
heartiest, bluff est figure of a jolly tar that ever 
sailed the seas. Wrinkled he was, but so is the 
jovial face of the ocean, with “innumerable laugh- 
ter”. His gray eyes beamed and twinkled as if 
they had stolen the sparkles of a million dancing 
waves. The very sea-wind was in his tumbled 
hair and whiskers. His mighty hands and arms, 
covered with their India ink emblazonry, looked 
strong to throw a life-rope to a drowning man. 
When he walked, his body rolled upon its sturdy 
legs like a rocking ship at sea. And when he 
spoke, his deep gruff voice had in it all sugges- 
tions of rollicking sailor-songs and child-delighting 
yarns and the hoarse, commanding shout that 
cleaves the roar of an Atlantic storm. Up to this 
evening Mr. Rexford had seen in the captain only 
an intrusive, tiresome old braggart, but beauty 
ever resides less in the thing beheld than in the 
eyes beholding. And it is equally true that the 
man to whom we do a favor acquires a new value 


DOLO. 


241 


in our vain-glorious human judgment. It is our 
own magnanimity exerted upon him which invests 
him with a reflected grace. From the moment 
that he invited Cap’n Noll to his table, Mr. Rex- 
ford began to like him. 

‘‘You may bring anything you like, so long as 
you bring an appetite,” Mr. Rexford answered; “I 
shall ask Mr. Yorke and his sons to take their 
meals with us, too. I suppose your wife will in 
the main look after herself and Mrs. Yorke and 
the sick boy, though we shall be glad to send in 
whatever may be needed.” 

“Trust the little woman for that,” said the cap- 
tain, cheerily; “there’s not much comes up in life 
as she ain’t a match fur. But I’m afeard you’re 
rather short o’ hands to undertake sech heavy 
sailin’, sir. I can carry wood an’ water myself an’ 
do chores about, an’ I calc’late to fetch the doc-» 
tor, for the boys must mind the critters an’ keep 
etarnal busy on that plagued bit o’ farm, else we’ll 
all fall short o’ kitchen sass. But you’ll find five 
men-folks, an’ a baby thrown in, a consider’ble 
heavy haul on your net, sir. An’ think o’ the 
dishes. I’m not much used to women tackle, but 
maybe I could bear a hand with a towel odd 
times.” 

“I have two daughters,” said Mr. Rexford, 
looking somewhat dubiously at the two gray- 


242 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


frocked little figures that were outlined so clearly 
against the moonlight. 

“Oh, yes; we’ll do the dishes,” promised Del, 
readily. “Which would you rather, Dolo — wash 
or wipe ? ” 

“I’ve made all the decisions I’m going to this 
day,” replied Dolo, in her old, sullen fashion. 

And so life on the island formed itself, for the 
next three weeks, around that little sick-bed as 
the center. Miss Lucas cooked right valiantly, 
though marveling much in her secret soul at the 
insatiate and unappeasable character of the boy 
appetite ; Del and Dolo washed and wiped huge 
piles of dishes with more patience than could have 
been expected of girls so little trained to the 
monotony of household tasks, although Del occa- 
sionally seasoned the suds with tears, and once 
Dolo, selecting as the dishes she hated most a 
narrow-necked milk pitcher and stolid little sugar 
bowl, struck them together with avenging fury 
and smashed them both into flinders ; Cap’n Noll 
dug clams, fished, tended his beloved lobster-pots 
and rowed the physician back and forth, putting 
up a sail, however, when the wind was fair; Eric 
picked up driftwood, ran errands, fetched pail 
after pail of water and looked after the cattle; 
Robert and Nathan worked steadily 'on the reluc- 
tant little farm, where n.ot even a pumpkin vine 


DOLO. 


243 


would thrive without personal and repeated solic- 
itation ; Grandma Brimblecomb watched with the 
fever-racked boy by day, and Mr. Yorke by night, 
the poor mother being too nearly frenzied with 
distress to render any effectual aid, and more than 
one bulky package of manuscript crossed the bay 
in Cap’n Noll’s fish-perfumed pocket to be mailed 
in the post-office on the coast. 

There seemed nothing left for Mr. Rexford to 
do but to amuse Baby Merry, and to that by no 
means easy task he gradually bent his stately 
energies. Cap’n Noll whistled and swore strange 
sailor-oaths under his breath, the boys stared and 
nudged each other’s elbows, and the girls could 
hardly credit the evidence of their senses ; but in 
the course of a fortnight the brown-eyed little 
rogue, by her baby fearlessness and innocent, 
nestling trust, had subjugated the stern-browed 
mathematician and made him, if not the slave of 
her queenship, at least her attentive and punctil- 
ious prime minister. 

Meanwhile Nick’s fever ran high, until there 
came a night of gravest anxiety. Mr. Yorke sat 
sadly by the shaded lamp, his forehead resting on 
his hand. The long hours of watching had left 
him wan of face, but they had given a more alert 
glance to the usually dreamy eyes and firmer lines 
to the naturally irresolute mouth. His wife, 


244 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


wrapt in a shawl, was crouched on a low stool 
opposite him, her arms clasped about her knees 
and her thin form rocking piteously back and 
forth. The. child reclined against the pillows, 
gasping out loud, painful breaths. Presently the 
physician, closely coated and scarfed, hurried in. 
Cap’n Noll had gone for him late in the afternoon. 

“If he comes in my dory of hisself, then he 
comes in my dory of hisself,” the tough old skip- 
per had growled, “but in my dory he comes, if I 
have to collar him and tie him down with fish- 
lines.” 

Resort to these extreme measures had not 
proved necessary, however, for the tired physi- 
cian, no whit lacking in the characteristic heroism 
of his profession, had made nothing, when he 
realized how urgent was the call, of undertaking 
the rough voyage over the dark waters. 

He tiptoed across the room, scrutinized his 
little patient sharply, listened to the laboring 
breath, stooped and peered into the swollen 
throat, touched the hot wrist and temples and 
shook his head. 

“The boy has a place to breathe through no 
larger than a knitting-needle,” he murmured to 
Mr. Yorke, as he set his tall hat upon the pillow 
and stepped back from the bed. 

They all supposed the child unconscious of 


DOLO. 


245 


what was going on about him, far adrift on a sea 
of feverish pain; but Nick had one cable yet 
holding him to this mortal shore. It was his 
mother’s face. The boy adored his mother, and 
every now and then, all through that suffering 
night, the shadowy lids, unnoticed by the watch- 
ers, had fluttered open, and the hollow, hungry 
eyes had sought that face, haggard, tear-stained, 
faded, but beautiful to him. 

Now when next Nick tried to look, he found the 
physician’s tall, black, ugly hat standing on the 
pillow between his eyes and the star of his child- 
ish love. That tall hat did what the medicine 
had failed to do. It arrested the ebbing forces of 
the will. The boy felt a sense of resentment flash 
through his darkening mind, new life came with a 
new determination and by a supreme effort he 
stirred his little wasted arm and sent the obnox- 
ious hat flying out upon the floor. ’ 

'‘Mamma!” he gasped. 

They were all about him in an instant. 

“Ah!” said the doctor, “he has more strength 
than I supposed. If we can pull him through the 
next few hours, we may save him yet. I would 
advise you, madam, if you can control yourself, to 
sit here beside the bed. You seem to be the cor- 
dial that he most needs.” 

Control herself ! The mother would have frozen 


246 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


into a statue for the sake of staying the outflow of 
that precious rivulet of life. Grandma Brimble- 
comb, heedless of the fact that her fluted nightcap 
was all awry, soon joined the whispering group, 
and everything that skill and love could devise 
was done to shield and foster the flickering flame 
of being, until the death-wind which hovered so 
near that its breath more than once blanched 
the bending faces, had passed over, and the boy 
was saved. 

The opening in the throat was a trifle enlarged 
by morning, the tide of the fever was turned, 
Nick had smiled feebly into his mother’s eyes and 
fallen, although still breathing with difficulty, into 
a brief slumber. 

‘‘He will live,” pronounced the physician, well- 
pleased with his night’s work. “He will need 
the wisest and most devoted nursing, and the 
mending may be slow, for the constitution is not 
a vigorous one — but he will live.” 

Then, and not till then, a great, choking sob 
was heard beneath the window, and Mr. Yorke, 
stepping out into the chilly air of dawn, found 
Eric lying at full length in his mother’s choicest 
flower-bed, his clothing saturated with the night- 
dews and his tearful face buried in his cap. 

For a few days to come there were two sick 
boys in that family, but Eric paid no heavier pen- 


DOLO. 


247 


alty for his long night vigil than a warning touch 
of pneumonia, and his second deed of rashness 
won him forgiveness for his first 

Then the islanders, cheered every morning by 
good tidings of Nick’s convalescence, had leisure 
for other than sick-room thoughts, and the report 
that Del was going away to school in September 
became noised abroad. The general outburst of 
lamentation made Dole’s strange little face colder 
than ever, and a creeping root of bitterness in 
her heart slowly infused its poison into all her 
thoughts. 

Eric posed as chief mourner, sometimes taking 
this crowning loss as a judgment upon him for 
his sins, but more frequently charging it to the 
crooked ways of fate. He tried to lose his appe- 
tite, but without remarkable success, as he made 
amends to himself, whenever he failed to pass his 
plate a third time at dinner, by rioting in Grandma 
Brimblecomb’s gingersnaps all the afternoon. 
One day he climbed up into the hay-mow and tried 
to write a poem, but had proceeded only so far as 
the two .words Del and shell, inscribed with a 
lead -pencil, one beneath the other, on a stray 
shingle, when Robert called to him to come and 
milk the cows. While the poet was engaged in 
this bucolic duty, Nat invaded the hay-mow, hunt- 
ing for hen’s eggs, and found the shingle instead. 


248 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


With brotherly kindness Nat filled out the 
lines, so that the completed poem read — 

“ I would sing to Del, 

If I were a shell, 

Sad songs of the sea, but blow it 1 
I’m a gander who. 

For all his ado. 

Can’t balloon himself off as a poet.” 

The shingle, with Eric’s compliments, was then 
presented to Del by Nat. This piece of unright- 
eous tampering with the most sacred feelings of 
the human heart nearly led to a pitched fight 
between the two boys, for Eric, in addition to all 
the rest, had become abnormally sensitive on the 
subject of balloons. 

But Del’s tearful persuasions, and possibly also 
the fact that Nat was several inches taller than 
himself and unusually sinewy, induced Eric, when 
his wrath had cooled, to lay by the plan of thrash- 
ing his elder brother until a more convenient 
season. 

Next to Eric, Cap’n Noll was loudest in expres- 
sion of his grief. Every morning the weather- 
stained old mariner would come rolling up to the 
door of the Rexford cottage — for life on the 
island, as Nick grew better, gradually resumed 
its wonted features — with one farewell gift or 


DOLO. 


249 


another for his Lady Blue-eyes. Once it was a 
collection of rainbow-tinted shells, the fruit of 
many voyages ; once a brace of bright-winged 
birds from foreign isles, perched on brackets of 
aromatic wood. Sometimes he* brought corals, 
arrows, vases, ostrich eggs from South Africa, 
and shoes that had tormented the genteel feet of 
some by-gone Chinese belle, books in outlandish 
tongues, ornaments in shell-work, whale-teeth curi- 
ously carven, devil-fish and flying-fish, models of 
strange canoes and queer, squat, grass-thatched 
huts, and even grim calabashes, marked with 
cabalistic characters, that the donor claimed had 
graced the board at bona fide cannibal repasts. 

But Cap’n Noll and Eric were not alone in 
their sorrow. Grandma Brimblecomb put her 
apron to her eyes whenever Del came in sight. 
Miss Lucas, to the child’s grateful astonishment, 
prepared little danties for her and set them 
quietly at her plate, Robert looked sober and 
regretful. Uncle Maurice often drew the girlish 
figure to his side and stroked the sunshiny hair 
with a gentle touch, and her father followed her 
every motion with deep and brooding eyes and 
softened his voice whenever he spoke her name. 
Dolo, unpraised, unpetted, unregarded, watched 
it all in scornful silence, while from day to day 
her anger gathered strength 


CHAPTER XII. 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


The morn awakes like brooding dove, 

With outspread wings of gray; 

Her feathery clouds close in above, 

And roof a sober day. 

— George MacDonald. 

I T is not necessary,” said Mr. Rexford, slowly, 
as he pushed back his chair from the break- 
fast table and bent his gaze thoughtfully on Del ; 
“it really is not necessary that you depend upon 
a stranger for your outfit. I am a poor man, but 
I am not a pauper. I would suggest. Miss Lucas, 
that you take Delia over to the mainland and buy 
her what she needs.” 

“Oh, father!” cried Del, with shining eyes, 
“ may we go to-day ? ” 

“Can’t you wait till to-morrow.?” asked her 
father, smiling. Mr. Rexford had been learning 
to smile during the past weeks. “The boys make 
their regular trip to-morrow, you know. And you 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


251 


must have a little time to plan out with Miss 
Lucas what you need.” 

“Not any more gray flannel frocks,” said Del, 
impulsively. 

Miss Lucas surveyed the speaker with an 
expression of mild reproach. 

“Gray flannel is very durable,” she said, 

“Oh, horribly durable!” assented Del, with 
emphasis, and then, fearing that she had hurt the 
housekeeper’s feelings, she added hastily, “Of 
course it’s nice here on Hermit Island,* but I don’t 
believe girls wear gray flannel much in Colorado.” 

“You can leave yours for Dolo, then,” said 
Miss Lucas, with a gleam of economy in her 
colorless eyes. 

Dolo shrugged her left shoulder, but no one 
was paying attention to Dolo, and the gesture 
passed unheeded. 

“I think,” said Mr. Rexford, musingly, “you 
would better call in the counsel, too, of Mrs: 
Yorke and that excellent woman, Mrs. Brimble- 
comb. There will be too much sewing for Miss 
Lucas to manage alone, now that the time is 
growing short, and they may be able to recom- 
mend a dressmaker. Perhaps they can make 
helpful suggestions, also, in regard to bonnets and 
sacques and — and polonaises — and frills — and 
— and” — 


252 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Mr. Rexford broke down in hopeless masculine 
confusion. 

“Oh, father, you’re so good!” exclaimed Del, 
timidly, but eagerly. “And now. Miss Lucas, let 
me help you with the housework, so we can go 
right over to talk with Grandma and Aunt 
Marion. Do you want to do dishes with me this 
morning, Dolo ? ” 

“No, I don’t,” said Dolo, and started for the 
door. But Mr. Rexford called her back, with a 
stern rebuke for being so disobliging, and com- 
manded her to help her sister. Dolo glowered 
darkly at her father, but returned, and got what 
wicked satisfaction she could by washing the 
dishes with such exasperating slowness that poor 
Del’s patience was nearly exhausted before the 
last mug was wiped and set on the shelf. Then 
Del flew up-stairs to put the chambers in order, 
too wise this time to ask for aid, and Dolo, with a 
grimace in the direction of the sink, escaped into 
the outer air. 

It was a strange morning. A haze hung low in 
the sky, giving a weird, far-away, dream-like 
aspect to sea and shore. The tossing foam was 
creamy in the shadow, and a mysterious, pallid, 
beautiful white in the occasional glimpses of sun. 
In the main the water was a wrinkled plain of 
shifting tints, all dull, save in the breaking of the 


POWERS OF DARKNESS.. 


253 


wave, when a vivid umber flashed into momentary 
view. 

Dolo felt the evil spirit waxing strong within 
her, but all day long the child was dumbly reach- 
ing out for help to overcome it. She started first 
of all to find Uncle Maurice, hoping that he would 
give her some reading to do and perhaps talk with 
her a while, but she had not set many prints of her 
little bare feet in the wet sand before she discov- 
ered the well-known, stooping figure seated under 
the umbrella canopy — which seemed superfluous 
on such a hazy day, but witnessed none the less 
to Nat’s devotion — and writing busily upon the 
tablet which rested on his knee. Dolo surveyed 
the good genius of the island wistfully, but was 
too generous to interrupt him. She was afraid of 
her own society, however, and ran up to the Brim- 
blecomb cottage for a romp with Baby Merry. 

But as hard fortune would have it. Baby Merry 
was in one of her naughtiest moods. The worst 
of these mischief-fits was the impossibility of pun- 
ishing the culprit. Grandma Brimblecomb had 
never succeeded, with all her ingenuity, in devis- 
ing a punishment which the perverse little creat- 
ure would recognize as such, for striking was out 
of the question. The captain would never suffer 
his wife even to snap the rosy fingers. But if 
Baby Merry was rebuked, she laughed and mim- 


254 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


icked the grave tones. If she was put in the cor- 
ner, she carried on a bewitching game of bopeep 
over first one shoulder and then the other, and so 
fell in love with the corner that she . refused to 
leave it when the appointed minutes of disgrace 
had flown. If she were kept indoors for a day, 
she declared with unruffled amiability that she 
would so much rather play in her ^‘dear gramp’s 
pretty house than out there in the horrid sand 
If she were given a meal of bread and water, she 
partook of her prison fare with peculiar relish and 
gratitude. If her grandparents, at the end of 
their puzzled wits, refused the good-night kiss, 
she embraced Mr. Monk and Major instead .and 
trotted off to her crib as radiant as ever. Once 
as a desperate measure she was put to bed in the 
middle of the afternoon, whereupon she mur- 
mured drowsily, with a cherubic smile — 

“Well, I was sleepy, grandma, ’deed I was,” 
and cuddling cozily under the clothes, fell directly 
into a sweet slumber, from which she aroused late 
in the evening, brimming over with roguery and 
laughter, to cut up enchanting capers all over the 
house until long after midnight. 

“And who was punished that time, I should 
like to know.?” grumbled the heavy-eyed captain 
to his wife the next morning. 

This particular day Baby Merry had begun her 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


255 


pranks at the breakfast-table, carrying her pecca- 
dilloes so far that she had been refused maple 
syrup, usually an especial delight, on her griddle 
cakes. 

“ I don't like the taste o' that old syrup, any- 
how," remarked the wee philosopher, when this 
doom was solemnly announced to her; “I was 
goin' to ask you to le' me have butter instead, 
grandma." 

The captain had pushed away his own plate, for 
he could never relish anything which was denied 
to his darling, and had hurried off on a fishing 
expedition, feeling that a domestic storm was in 
the air. And a sage weather prophet he was, 
for so rapidly did things go from bad to worse 
that Cap’n Noll's burly figure was scarcely out 
of sight before Grandma Brimblecomb had to 
threaten Baby Merry with the closet. 

“I’ve been wantin' ever ’n’ ever 'n' ever so long 
to play in the closet," promptly responded this 
epitome of cheerfulness; “an' so has Mr. Monk." 

“ Mr. Monk will stay down in the kitchen with 
me," replied Grandma Brimblecomb, decidedly, 
and pursing up her mouth with a determined air, 
she seized a broom and trudged up-stairs to a 
small chamber under the eaves that served, on 
occasions like the present, for a place of durance 
vile. 


256 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The room was almost bare, but Grandma Brim- 
blecomb, still wearing an aspect of severe reso- 
lution, removed the few miscellaneous household 
effects that had strayed into it, whisked her 
broom about in search of cobwebs and even took 
down the shades from the windows. 

“There!” she exclaimed, pantingly, leaning on 
her broom and gazing in triumph about the 
empty apartment; “I’ve done it at last. The 
child can’t find a single blessed thing to do but sit 
down on the floor and think how naughty she has 
been. There’s not even a bit of string or a straw 
left here to amuse her.” 

And so Baby Merry, her sandy little pocket 
rifled and turned inside out, a pebble extricated 
from one tiny fist and a kicking grasshopper from 
the other, was impressively conducted across the 
threshold into this closet of repentance and there 
left alone to chew the cud of bitter reflections. 

But not even solitary confinement, which has 
broken .the spirit of many a hardened criminal, 
could blight the irrepressible jollity of naughty 
Baby Merry. When Dolo arrived on the scene, 
she found the chubby old lady on her knees 
before the door, peeping with a most disgusted 
expression of countenance in through the key- 
hole. 

“Look there!” she whispered, without turning 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


257 


her head, for Dole’s light step upon the stairs, 
steadier than Del’s tripping footfall, she recog- 
nized at once. “ It’s no earthly use trying to 
hold to any discipline with that child. I declare 
to goodness, she’s enough to make a barnacle let 

go-” 

Dolo, grasping the situation in a twinkling, 
stooped and applied her eye to the key-hole. 
There was Baby Merry dancing with frolic feet 
about the closet of repentance, eagerly engaged 
in blowing a small feather after a small fly, these 
two treasures and these only — but enough is as 
good as a feast — having escaped the broom. The 
fly was lazily winging his way back and forth in 
mid-air, and Baby, her brown eyes all a-sparkle 
with the excitement of the chase and her flushed 
cheeks puffed out so that she looked like a minia- 
ture Boreas, was keeping the feather afloat and 
driving it after the fly. 

She’s having the best time she ever had in 
her life,” said Grandma Brimblecomb, despair- 
ingly; “I may as well let her out.” 

^G’ll take her off to walk with me,” proposed 
Dolo. But there was small comfort to be had out 
of Baby Merry on that promenade. She would 
not let Dolo take her hand, she would not tell a 
story nor listen to one, she flew like a little demon 
on every whelk and snail she saw, determined to 


258 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


pound them to pieces and resisting passionately 
when Dolo dragged her away. She punched and 
poked the defenseless jelly-fish with a lobster-claw 
she had picked up on the sand, she kicked the 
dead cunners entangled in the seaweed, she 
hooted derisively at the great waves, she spattered 
Dolo with salt water and finally ran away to see 
Nick. 

During all the walk Dolo, feeling dull of heart, 
had put forth no effort to assert her wonted con- 
trol over the child, merely interfering, from time 
to time, to prevent the small fury from maltreat- 
ing the helpless sea-creatures. But when she 
noticed what direction the scampering fugitive 
had taken, Dolo hastened after her. Baby Merry, 
however, having a good start and plying her 
sturdy little legs at full speed, arrived first and 
was admitted by Mrs. Yorke, on condition of be- 
ing extremely good and quiet, to Nick’s sick- 
room. Baby had not seen her playmate since he 
fell ill and she was so astonished at the thin, 
white face upon the pillow and the shadowy hand 
stretched out to stroke her plump, brown cheek, 
that she was petrified into a wee image of proprie- 
ty. But by the time poor Dolo — hoping now that 
some touch of peace might be instilled into her 
stormy mood from Nick’s gentle presence, for he 
was such a gracious little invalid that his brothers 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


259 


had dubbed him St. Nicholas — followed Baby 
Merry into the room, even the boy had become 
possessed by the spirit of evil which seemed to 
have chosen that day for stalking all abroad. 

In short, Dolo detected Nick in a deed of black- 
est treachery. 

“Baby,” he was pleading, as Dolo entered, 
“when mamma comes back, say you want a ‘cooky 
for each of us — for each of us; now, mind, will 
you ? ” 

For the fever-famished child was hungry enough 
to eat his bedposts, and the delicate strips of 
toast and sparing cupfuls of broth on which he 
was regaled at prudent intervals only served to 
insult his craving. 

Let us hope it was the ravening hunger in him 
that was responsible for his most unchivalrous 
conduct. For as Mrs. Yorke came in, bearing an 
unwelcome dose for Nick, Baby Merry gazed up 
guilelessly into her face and said as bidden — 

“Please give me an’ Nick a cooky.” 

“Why-ee, Baby Merry!” sighed Nick, from 
the bed in a grieved, superior tone; “how rude 
you have grown since I’ve been sick! That was 
very naughty. I’m quite ’stressed about you.” 

Baby Merry, not unnaturally, looked puzzled 
and put up a pouting lip, while Mrs. Yorke, all 
unaware of the under current, but anxious lest 


260 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


her boy’s slight strength should be overtaxed, led 
the child from the room. Dolo followed, but left 
Baby Merry curled up in a corner of the fireplace, 
serenely devouring a cooky, for Nick’s monkey- 
device, though it failed utterly as regarded him- 
self, worked well for the little cat’s paw. But 
despairing of any heavenly effects to be wrought 
upon her dark temper from the influence of inno- 
cent childhood — at least, of such specimens of 
innocent childhood as Hermit Island could pro- 
duce that morning — Dolo, uncompanioned, wan- 
dered aimlessly about the shore until dinner 
time. 

Robert dropped in to dine with them, for much 
more neighborly habits, as regarded the Rexford 
cottage, had prevailed in the island since the day 
of the balloon ascension. The big fellow was 
good-natured as ever and readily agreed to take 
Miss Lucas and Del across to the coast the next 
day. 

“I wish there was room for you, too,” Robert 
said, in his thoughtful, kindly fashion, turning to 
Dolo ; “ but we have to bring back so much in 
the way of groceries. I’m afraid to take the risk 
of overloading the boat.” 

“ And this time you’ll have dry goods to bring 
back, too,” said Del, blithely. 

Robert laughed. 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


261 


“Dry goods or wet goods — we’ll wait till they 
are landed before we decide,” he said. 

Then the talk turned on Del’s outfit and passed 
to Colorado and the journey thither and the tradi- 
tional features of boarding-school life, until Dolo, 
utterly miserable with envy, yet still so true to 
her nobler nature as to be ashamed of her misery, 
wished she could crawl into some deep and dark 
secluded hole and pull the hole in, too. 

She quitted the table while the others were still 
talking and stole softly out of doors. As she 
stood poised on the edge of the bluff, undecided 
where to go or what to do, she noticed that the 
morning haze had lifted, but that there was still a 
curious unreality upon the face of things — a con- 
cealed threat in nature, a hinted foreboding in the 
air. The water was silver gray, with glints of 
green. Only the distant shore-line was blue. 
The sky wore a veil of thin, gray clouds, but these 
were rifted at the zenith, disclosing faint, far- 
away tints of violet. There were white caps out 
at sea and the water looked cold. The wind was 
so chill that the little wild mustard blossoms 
seemed to shrink and shiver. 

Dolo wondered idly if this keen air would 
make the Hermit cough. He had been coughing 
so badly of late. Indeed, a fortnight since she 
had been so much disturbed about his condition 


262 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


that she had ventured, with Uncle Maurice’s 
approval, to take the physician to see him ; but 
the interview had not been a success. The Her- 
mit had eyed the affable docter distrustfully and 
announced to Dolo in a confidential whisper that 
he was an impostor. ‘H can prove it, too,” the 
old man had said, raising his white head fiercely 
and pointing one tremulous finger at the physi- 
cian as that gentleman stood before him in all the 
dignity of his tall silk hat. “Tell me, if you are a 
doctor, did any man ever own a heart that never 
thought an evil thought and never loved a lie ? ” 

“The scalpel does not probe so deep as to lay 
bare the thoughts of the heart,” said the physi- 
cian, drily; “but from my experience in the world, 
I should say no.” 

“I told you he was an impostor,” affirmed the 
Hermit, turning to Dolo, and he uncovered the 
plateful of dinner which Grandma Brimblecomb 
had just sent over to him. Upon one side of the 
plate, with wing and drumstick, lay a chicken’s 
heart. 

“It is mine,” said the Hermit, angrily, “mine, 
I tell you. It was given to me. I own it. And 
it never thought an evil thought. It never loved 
a lie. Take him away,” he added, in an altered, 
troubled voice, looking up appealingly with his 
wild old eyes into Dolo’s face. “He makes me 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


263 


hot. He makes me cold. Something beats and 
hurts me in the head. He is an impostor." 

Even Dolo had felt constrained to apologize, as 
she walked away with the baffled physician. 

‘Ht is because you are a stranger," she said. 
But her companion’s lower lip gave its nervous 
twitch of disapproval — an ugly motion, Dolo 
thought, observing it. 

‘Ht’s a case for the state mad -house," he 
declared. 

‘^Oh, you mustn’t send him there!" exclaimed 
Dolo, in terror; “he would die." 

“Hm! He isn’t likely to live forever, any- 
where," muttered the physician, intending to look 
into the case more thoroughly on some subse- 
quent visit to the island. He was in haste that 
day. But he was a busy man, with whom haste 
was a chronic malady, and the pressure of other 
cares crowded the matter from his mind. 

It occurred to Dolo, standing on the edge of the 
bluff, that she might as well give up going to peo- 
ple to get help. She would try giving help next 
and see what came of that. So she went back 
home and rummaged stealthily in the pantry until 
she had found a loaf of bread and the half of a 
boiled tongue. She trespassed upon these only so 
far as was needful to make two sandwiches and, 
adding a cup of milk, slipped away with her spoils. 


264 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The Hermit welcomed her approach with the 
customary brightening of his dull eyes, and smiled 
his wan, piteous smile over the supper she dis- 
played. He was crouching in the doorway of his 
hut, as usual, but he had drawn the old butternut 
coat closely around him and moaned with the cold. 
Dolo tugged a buffalo robe out from the interior 
of the hut and folded it as best she could about 
his shoulders. He seemed grateful, but was little 
inclined to talk, rocking himself to and fro and 
crooning his ballad over and over, as if oblivious 
of Dolo’s presence. 

When she finally rose to go, however, his shak- 
ing hands caught at her dress. 

“I must tell you,” he said, speaking in a mys- 
terious undertone and drawing her nearer that she 
might hear; ‘‘1 have seen his face.” 

“Whose face.^” asked Dolo. 

“For three nights,” repeated the Hermit’s qua- 
vering voice, “I have seen his face. It is the 
little wood-sawyer in the corner. He has been 
sawing there so many, many years. But the stick 
is nearly sawed through now. It will fall soon. 
Ah, soon, soon, soon. And for three nights he 
has turned his face and looked at me.” 

Dolo had a vague remembrance that they had 
talked of this fantastic personage before. 

“How does he look at you.?” she asked. 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


265 


The Hermit glanced with terrified eyes first 
over one shoulder and then over the other. 

Are any of the evil faces listening ? Are 
they peeping and mocking.?” he whispered. 

Dolo felt an uncomfortable shudder run through 
her, but answered with commendable firmness — 

“Not one.” 

“He looks,” whispered the Hermit, “kind. I 
had not thought that he would look kind. But his 
eyes are gentle and they smile. They do not try 
to spring on me, like the eyes in the evil faces. 
They quiet a long pain. I have forgotten what 
made the pain, but his eyes quiet it.” 

Dolo moved again to go, for she' feared the 
Hermit was becoming over- weary, and again the 
withered fingers clung to her frock. 

“Let me tell you. Let me tell you. Last, 
night the little wood-sawyer turned and smiled on 
me. And then he pointed with his arm. And I 
looked. And there was a great light. The evil 
faces all fled away. I have not seen them since. 
And in the center of the light was a tall doorway, 
dark, ebon-dark. I was afraid and hid my head 
under the buffalo robe. But when I looked again, 
the doors were parted and a woman stood there — 
a woman with a face all shining, and in a long, 
white robe. And she held out her hands to me. 
And then I was not afraid.” 


266 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Had you ever seen her before.?” asked Dolo, 
in a low voice. 

The old man shook his white head vaguely. 

“I do not know. I cannot remember.” 

Dolo was alarmed. She had never known the 
Hermit to talk so eagerly and rapidly. She won- 
dered if he were about to have a fever, like Nick, 
and she wished he had liked the doctor. She sat 
down beside him on the step and gave him his 
supper, holding the morsels of bread and meat to 
his lips, as one would feed a little child, and 
occasionally coaxing him to take a drink of the 
milk. He ate submissively and afterwards let 
Dolo lead him into the hut, where he fell heavily 
on his rough bed. The child covered him as 
warmly as she could with the buffalo robes, placed 
water within his reach, looked sorrowfully at the 
cracks and knot-holes in the crazy walls, softly 
bade the Hermit good-night and reluctantly left 
him there alone. 

She walked slowly homeward in the twilight, 
thinking that she must surely bring Grandma 
Brimblecomb to-morrow to look at the poor old 
man and see if he were really ill. He might not 
distrust her, as he had distrusted the physician. 
And she would talk over plans for the winter 
with Uncle Maurice. The boys could patch up 
the walls of the hut, but it was a forlorn, desolate 


POWERS OF DARKNESS. 


267 


place at best. It was just possible that her father 
would consent to shelter the Hermit under his 
roof during the harshest weather. After all, it 
was better that she should remain on the island. 
No one else could care for the Hermit so well, 
and he would be very lonely if she should go 
away. It was good to feel herself needed, and 
Dolo raised her head, with a happier light in her 
eyes than they had known that day, and saw Nat 
coming on an awkward run to meet her. Even 
in the uncertain light, she noted that his face 
was suffused with joy and pride. 

*^Oh, Dolo!” he panted, “what do you think 
I’ve got to tell you } Father has been offered an 
editorial department in T/ie Eagle Review^ and 
we are going to spend the winter in New York, 
father and mother and Nick and I. Robert, and 
Eric are to stay here and look after the place, 
boarding at Cap’n Noll’s, but I’m to study. Your 
father spoke a good word for me there. Eric 
wants to stay, and Rob — oh, the place couldn’t 
get along without Rob. But mother is so glad to 
get Nick off the island. And I’m wild to go. But 
the best of all is that it’s father who has brought 
all this about. Haven’t I always told you that my 
father could do anything under the sun, if he only 
would.? Of course he can. You just ought to 
read what that head editor says about his articles.” 


268 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


And Nat, stammering, blushing, triumphant, 
tripped up over his own legs and suddenly sat 
down on the sand. 

Dolo did not laugh. She felt as if she should 
never laugh again. She hated Nat. She hated 
Del. She hated all the world. She set her 
white teeth savagely, clenched her small brown 
fists and sped away like the wind, leaving the 
bewildered boy still sitting on the sand, rubbing 
his eyes with his knuckles and wondering ruefully 
what he had said to put Dolo out of temper. 


CHAPTER XIIL 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 

Into a little pyre 

The twigs she built and, swiftly kindling fire, 
Set it alight, and with her head bent low 
Sat patiently and watched the red flames grow. 
Till it burned bright and lit the dreary place. 


— William Morris. 



‘HE kitchen clock had struck eight, and Del 


-JL was still sitting in a happy little heap on 
the floor beside Miss Lucas’ chair eagerly discuss- 
ing the deeds to be done on the morrow. 

“Two school dresses and a best dress! Just 
think of it!” she chattered. “The best dress 
must be blue, oh, please. Miss Lucas. And if 
only I could have a blue ribbon on my hat to 
match ! ” 

The housekeeper’s phlegmatic countenance took 
on a shade of anxiety. 

“We must get goods that will wear,” she said. 

“Oh, if they’re pretty, I don’t care how long 


2/0 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


they last,” replied Del, cheerfully; “I would be so 
careful of a nice blue dress. Oh, you can’t think 
how careful I would be. But I’ll tell you some- 
thing naughty, if you’ll promise beforehand to for- 
give me. I gave my last cloth cap before this 
one to Major to chew up. It wouldn’t wear out 
any other way, and it was so homely. But the 
next day you sent over to the coast by Rob and 
got me another just like it.” 

“It might be her own mother’s voice,” mused 
Mr. Rexford, as he sat in his study with the door 
ajar. He tried to make it appear, even to himself, 
that he had left the door unlatched by accident. 
In reality he was listening, with a mist over his 
eyes, to every word that Del was saying. “After 
all,” his thought ran on, “this love of dress is a 
harmless vanity. It is only one phase of the 
love of beauty and is not incompatible with nobler 
phases, such as the love of beauty in nature or 
in conduct. I never misjudged Mary for it when 
I was by her side. It was only when I was mad- 
dening in those accursed prison walls that I lost 
my understanding of her character — that I came 
to forget in her all but her heedless, childlike 
extravagance and delight in the follies of society. 
She had never been trained to anything else. 
And I let her think I liked it, too. I let her think 
that money grew in my pockets. If she broke 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


271 


my fortunes, it is true, as James Grafton said, 
that I broke her heart. And I sinned against her 
at the first hardly less than at the last. I have 
always thought that in those early years I loved 
her only too well. I begin to see that even then 
I loved her too little. For love means trust and 
truth, and I gave her neither. Mary, Mary ! Do 
you hear me.^ Do you pity.^ Can you forgive 
The man you loved has shown himself so all 
unworthy of your love. I have failed as a citizen. 
I have failed as a father. But it is toward you, 
my wife, that I have failed most grievously.” 

He let fall his arms upon his desk, dropped his 
prematurely white head upon them and did not 
raise it again until the clock struck nine. Then 
he arose, passed his hand wearily across his fore- 
head and stepped out, as if seeking comfort, into 
the living-room. 

Miss Lucas sat half asleep in her chair, me- 
chanically clicking her knitting-needles. Del’s 
blithesome voice was still running on like a silver- 
sounding brook. 

^‘And are these the people that have to take 
such an early start to-morrow morning?” asked 
Mr. Rexford. “ Nine o’clock ! ” 

Del sprang to her feet with a gesture of 
astonishment. 

Why ! I never dreamed it was so late,” she 


2/2 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


said. “ Poor Miss Lucas ! How I have been 
boring you ! But I am so happy about to-morrow. 
Only — only — are you quite sure, father, you 
ought to give us so much money to spend 

“It is your mothers money,” said Mr. Rexford, 
slowly ; “ the little that she had in her own right 
is what we have been living on all these years. 
It is only a little, but our wants are few and it 
suffices.” 

“If there should be something left over to-mor- 
row,” asked Del, hesitatingly, “couldn’t I get 
some little present for Dolo ? She likes pretty 
things, too. And you know it was her choice 
that I should go. I should like so much to bring 
her back a nice handkerchief, or bright ribbon to 
wear at her throat. Cherry would be a good 
color for Dolo.” 

“If you bring me a cherry ribbon, or anything 
else. I’ll take the scissors and snip it into a thou- 
sand pieces,” spoke out most unexpectedly a defi- 
ant voice from the top of the ladder, where the 
startled eyes of the family now for the first time 
discerned among the shadows the glimmer of a 
white night-dress. 

“Eavesdropping again.?” asked Mr. Rexford, 
sternly. “You need not fear that you will be 
troubled with gifts, after such a speech as that. 
Go back to your bed directly.” 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


273 


There was no answer, but the glimmer of the 
white night-dress disappeared. 

*^Oh, father,” pleaded Del, ready to cry, “I 
don’t think Dolo is well. She didn’t eat a single 
bit of supper and she went up-stairs as soon as 
we left the table.” 

A little fasting will not hurt her,” said Mr. 
Rexford, sternly. 

‘‘Maybe she feels sorry, now that it is nearly 
time for me to go, that she decided it that way,” 
suggested Del, with quivering lip. 

“You need not concern yourself,” replied her 
father, carelessly ; “ I have never seen any signs 
that she was troubled by the mania of self-sacri- 
fice. If she had cared to go, you may depend 
upon it that she would have decided differently. 
She likes a wild life, and is well enough off on 
the island.” 

Dolo, sitting sulkily in the deeper shadows 
a little space back from the top of the ladder, 
choked down a great, angry lump in her throat. 

“Here is your light,” said Miss Lucas to Del, 
blinking like an owl as she handed the girl a tal- 
low dip in a battered tin candlestick. 

“That is a hint worth the taking,” said Mr. 
Rexford. “Good-night.” 

“Good-night, father. Thank you so much 
for everything,” replied Del, glancing up shyly 


274 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


into the dark, deeply-chiseled face so far above 
her. 

Mr. Rexford would have been glad to stoop and 
kiss his daughter, but a stiffness of years is not 
so easily eradicated from the backbone, and he had 
not kissed Del since she was a baby. To Dolo, 
who had been born in the first month of his im- 
prisonment, he had never given a fatherly caress. 
So he returned to his study, ashamed of the yearn- 
ing pain about his heart, and strove to find again 
his sterner self in the domain of mathematics. 

Del, on entering the little chamber which the 
sisters shared, beheld Dolo tucked up in bed, 
apparently fast asleep. Del had her suspicions of 
that peaceful slumber, but she carefully shaded 
the candle with a gay feather-fan which was one 
of Cap’n Noll’s parting keepsakes, undressed her- 
self swiftly and quietly, blew out the flickering 
flame, knelt a few minutes at the bedside and 
then crept softly in beside her sister. 

Good-night, Dolo,” she murmured, but no 
word nor motion made response, and Del, patting 
wistfully the end of the long black braid, nestled 
her bright head deep in the pillow and, notwith- 
standing her eager anticipation of the morrow, fell 
presently into a refreshing sleep. There was no 
sign of waking life in the room, after that, until 
the kitchen clock struck ten. 


THE .MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


275 


Then Dole cautiously raised herself upon her 
elbow and peered out into the shadows with burn- 
ing, sleepless eyes. 

Oh, how stupid it is to be good ! ” It was 
something in this fashion that the hot, tumultuous 
thoughts went surging through her brain. “I 
tried to be good. I tried. I tried. Nobody 
knows how hard I wanted to go. Nobody cares. 
But I thought it would be selfish and I chose for 
Del. I wish I hadn’t. It is silly to be good. 
Everybody supposes I didn’t care and worse 
things keep happening to me all the time. I 
tried to please God and he just takes advantage 
of it. But I won’t stand everything. No, I won’t. 
I’m awfully wicked. I’m glad of it. Maybe God 
will strike me dead. I don’t care if he does. 
Perhaps there isn’t any God, anyhow. I read in 
one of Uncle Maurice’s books — he didn’t tell me 
I might — that some wise men over in England 
and Germany and places think astronomy made 
the world, and we people are just monkeys in 
clothes. Father told me the other day that I 
acted like a monkey. I wonder how he would 
have liked it if I’d told him he acted like a bear. 
’Twould have been as true as what he said and 
just as polite. I almost hope there really isn’t 
any God. I don’t believe there can be. If there 
was, he wouldn’t forget all about a girl who had 


2/6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


tried so hard to do right. He would let nice 
things happen to her afterward, and not hor- 
rid things. But nothing nice ever happens to 
me. Father doesn’t love me. Maybe he’s begin- 
ning to love Del, but he doesn’t love me. And I 
do more for him than Del ever thought of doing. 
I dusted his old books only this morning, when he 
was out for his walk before breakfast. I wish 
now I had left pepper on them instead of the dust. 
It’s no fair in father to love Del and not love me. 
We’re both his children. Everybody loves Del, 
except the Hermit, and I suppose he’s going to 
die. God doesn’t want that there should be any- 
body alive to love me. And I tried to be good. I 
try oftener than people think, but I don’t seem to 
make out much. It’s easy for Del to be good. 
She never tried in all her life half as hard as I 
tried the other day. And I did it, too. I didn’t 
make the selfish choice. But nobody thinks I 
cared. Nobody thinks anything about me any- 
way. It is always Del. It must be so comfort- 
able to be Del. People love her for being pretty 
and sweet-tempered, and she couldn’t be anything 
else, if she wanted to. Things aren’t fair. I hate 
this world. I hate to live. If I grow up on 
Hermit Island, without Uncle Maurice to teach 
me, I shall just be a cross, stupid, ugly woman, 
and Del will be a lady like mamma. Oh, if 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


277 


mamma had only stayed with us ! Mamma used 
to love me. Mamma used to hold me close and 
kiss me all over my face. Nobody ever has since. 
Nobody ever will again. I wish I could die 
to-night and go to mamma. But she went to 
heaven and I’m so wicked God will send me way 
off into the dark. I don’t care. He needn’t be 
so mean to me here, anyhow. I tried to do right, 
and he doesn’t even leave me Uncle Maurice. 
There’ll be no new books any more, and nobody 
to teach me anything. Nat is so glad to go. He 
would be glad never to see Hermit Island or any- 
body on it again. I know he would. I don’t 
care how soon he goes. I hope he’ll not ever, 
ever come back. I wish Del would go to-morrow 
for good and all. I wish she was gone already — 
and Nat, and Uncle Maurice, and Aunt Marion, 
and Nick, and everybody else. Oh, I’m so tired! 
God doesn’t even let me go to sleep, when my 
head aches so, and my eyes are like fire, but here 
Del went right off to sleep almost as soon as her 
head touched the pillow. Pshaw! Del thought 
she was so mighty generous to buy herself three 
new dresses and a hat and all the rest of it and 
then bring me home a stingy little strip of cherry 
ribbon. And father scolded me, because I didn’t 
simper and say I was so much obliged. Father 
scolds me every chance he gets. I won’t be 


2/8 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


scolded into being good, though. The more he 
scolds, the worse I’ll be. I shall never, never, 
never try to be good again. It doesn’t pay. It’s 
better to be bad. I don’t believe mamma, way 
off in heaven, knows whether I’m good or not. I 
wish there was some awfully, awfully wicked thing 
I could do, like setting the house on fire, or cut- 
ting off all Del’s hair while she’s asleep, or chop- 
ping holes in every one of, the boats, so that they 
can’t go over to the coast to-morrow. I’ll do 
something. I’m going to turn wicked. Trying 
to do . right is no use at all. God only takes 
advantage of you and sends you more troubles, 
and more and more, because he knows you’ll bear 
’em. But I won’t bear ’em. No, I won’t. 
•What can I do to be wicked.? What dreadful 
thing is there that I can do.?” 

And Dolo, falling back on her pillow, stared 
into the dark with fierce black eyes, until the 
kitchen clock struck eleven. 

Then the child rose on her elbow again and 
leaned over Del, listening to the soft, regular 
breathing until she was satisfied that her sister’s 
slumbers were genuine and deep. Next lifting 
herself cautiously to her knees, she pulled up the 
quilt to cover her vacant place and, creeping 
down to the foot of the bed, climbed with her 
own. peculiar, stealthy agility over the foot-board. 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


279 


Then she stole about the room in the darkness, 
finding her garments one by one and drawing 
them on deliberately, without sign of nervous- 
ness. She even had the forethought to clothe 
herself more warmly than usual, donning an extra 
skirt and throwing a heavy shawl, • compactly 
folded, over her arm. She did not put on shoes 
and stockings, however, for the shoes would be 
noisy on the ladder. When she was dressed, she 
stood for a moment lost in thought. Then she 
approached the bed and, reaching over Del’s 
unconscious head, took her own pillow. She 
drew off the unbleached cotton case and used this 
as a bag, filling it from a little chest in the corner 
where she kept her most sacred treasures. There 
were books which Uncle Maurice had given her 
at various Christmastides and birthdays — the 
books which had made her, when she read them, 
want to be good — “Water Babies,” “Rab and 
his Friends,” “Story of a Short Life,” “The Back 
of the North Wind,” “The Little Lame Prince,” 
and the “Pilgrim’s Progress”. There were some 
illuminated Scripture texts that had been given 
her at Sunday School' when she was a little 
girl . in the infant class, and there was the 
dainty Bible, with her name lettered in gilt on 
the cover, that had been hung for her by a 
very intelligent Santa Claus, who knew not only 


28 o 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


what she wanted most, but even how her name 
ought to be spelled, on the great, candle-lighted 
Christmas Tree in the church. There were two 
manuscript books, too, each written half through 
in a childish pencil -scrawl. One was the “ Good 
Resolution Book” and the other the “Diary of 
my Soul There was a well-worn pair of Merry’s 
baby-socks, a bracket stained with blood from the 
cut awkward Nat had inflicted upon himself in 
whittling it out for her, and a sheet of paper on 
which she had written down the Hermit’s ballad. 
There was a delicate, lace-edged handkerchief, 
too, that had been her mother’s, and an embroid- 
ered, fairy-like glove, with a faint perfume still 
clinging to it. There had always been sachets 
lying in her mother’s glove-box. There was 
something else, besides, that Dole’s groping lit- 
tle hand closed upon tightest of all. She did 
not pack this away in the pillow-case, but slipped 
it inside the bosom of her dress. 

And then, lifting her bag with its varied con- 
tents over her shoulder, Dole passed like a furtive 
shadow from the room. 

So far, so good, but how that stair-ladder did 
creak! And what possessed the boards in the 
floor below, that they should groan and crack 
under her swift, light steps ? Dolo had never 
heard those boards so much as squeak in the 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


281 


daytime, but now it was positively a racket — an 
uproar. The cold perspiration started all over 
Dole’s body. The inexplicable noises made by 
those tell-tale boards would certainly bring her 
father out upon her. He had not gone up to bed. 
A light still shone from under the study door. 
Dolo ground her teeth together and shot a glance 
of desperate defiance at that tranquil ray. But 
there was no sound from the study, and the girl, 
carefully avoiding contact with chairs or table, 
made her way to the outside door. Fortunately 
for her purpose, locks and bolts were never used 
on Hermit Island, and the rude latch yielded read- 
ily to the pressure of her hand. She swung the 
door open as far as she dared, but even then the 
bag upon her shoulder, so heavily freighted with 
books, scraped and bumped in passing through. 
Dolo, in her dismay, almost lost her hold of the 
door. Ah, if she had ! If she had let it slam ! 
But she closed it so softly that it scarcely jarred. 
She let fall the latch so gently that it hardly 
clicked. And then, drawing a long, deep breath, 
she balanced her burden more evenly across her 
back, clutched the crumpled end of the pillow-case 
tightly in both hands, threw back her head with 
a free, wild motion and raced away from the 
house as if she were pursued by a legion of angry 
fathers. 


282 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


In point of fact, however, Mr. Rexford, entirely 
undisturbed, sat calmly at his desk, far too intent 
on the movements of the heavenly bodies to trace 
the eccentric orbit of a certain very terrestrial 
little body that even then was fleeing with glit- 
tering eyes away from the refuge of his roof 
into the sable gloom of midnight. 

The sea-wind smote Dolo with so biting a cold 
that she paused for a moment, when she had 
reached the beach, and muffled her head and 
shoulders in the shawl she had brought on her 
arm. The air still blew chill on her uncovered 
legs and feet, but she ran too fast to incur much 
danger of taking cold in them. 

The night was cloudy and very dark. Dolo 
was like an Indian, however, in the keenness of 
all her senses. She could make her way by feel- 
ing and by hearing almost as unerringly as by 
sight. On her right hand arose the dim shadow 
of the bluff, and on her left was the long, waver- 
ing line of surf, ever parting and reuniting, start- 
lingly white against the blackness. The roar of 
the breaking waters, the unceasing chime of 
ocean, was the only sound to be heard, and this 
was to the island maiden’s ears a sound at once 
so familiar and so solemn that it seemed to throw 
the silence into still more terrible relief. 

To Dolo the silence was very desolation. She 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


283 


felt herself alone in the wide universe, shut off 
from God, from her mother, from all holy influ- 
ences, human or angelic, but she sped on along 
the wet, cold sands, with straining muscles and 
passionate, rebellious heart, a flying shape that 
seemed to cut for itself a passage through the 
dense profound of night. 

She could not have been far from the Hermit’s 
hut, when she turned abruptly and ran toward the 
bluff. Surely she would not try, encumbered 
with her bag and shawl, to climb that slippery 
steep in the darkness. Siich evidently was no 
part of her intention, for she halted when she was 
within touching distance of the sandy bank and 
knelt upon the ground, curling up her shivering 
legs beneath her. She let down the laden pillow- 
case from her shoulder, turned its contents out 
upon the sand, shook it by the corners to make 
sure that it was empty, and then flung it aside. 
For what was she searching in her pocket.^ 
Matches ? Even in that perilous crossing of the 
creaking floor, she had remembered to reach up to 
the mantel-shelf and possess herself of a card of 
matches. She broke the card and rubbed the 
pieces together until the ends ignited. Then she 
made a blaze from the illuminated Scripture texts 
and the ballad sheet, and set the books, wide-open, 
around it, fluttering the leaves back and forth. 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


284 

One after another they caught fire, the green and 
gilt Bible first of all, and blazed brightly there in 
the heart of the midnight, while Dolo, her dark 
little face working strangely in the ruddy light, 
flung upon this altar of unholy sacrifice the 
bracket and the socks, the glove and the handker- 
chief, and last of all a card photograph of her 
mother, worn by childish kisses. This she drew 
from her bosom and threw into the core of the 
fire. Another instant, and she had thrust her 
hand in after it ; but it was too late. She 
snatched back her hand burned and smarting, 
but the picture was irretrievably gone. With a 
moan like that of a wounded animal, Dolo started 
to her feet and tossing up her arms above her 
head, an uncanny, witchlike little image in the 
circle of red light that was walled all about with 
blackness, prayed aloud the most extraordinary 
prayer ever voiced on Hermit Island. 

“Evil Spirit, whoever you are, I am yours. 
Take me and make me wicked. I have sacrificed 
to you here in the fire all the things that belong 
to the good part of me. If I knew how, I would 
burn that up, too. I hate goodness. I want to 
be wicked. I want to curse Del and Nat and all 
the people who are happy. Please bring trouble 
on them. Amen.” 

Then the child ceased, appalled at her own 


THE MIDNIGHT ALTAR. 


285 


words. She looked down upon the fire which had 
already consumed the most of its precious, irre- 
coverable fuel. She looked out upon the encom- 
passing darkness, now fast closing in upon her, as 
if to claim her for its own. The ocean peal was 
like the sad, majestic, reproachful voice of God. 
A sudden agony of fright seized upon her. For- 
getful of the pillow-case, regardless of the still 
burning fire, she sprang away and rushed home- 
ward over the beach, the shawl trailing heavily 
behind her. The horror of that flight ! The 
blackness of the night was hideous. The air 
seemed thick with demons, that pressed upon 
her and caught at her as she ran. Each little 
bare toe curled in mortal dread of feeling itself 
clutched. The girl was mad with terror and beat 
the air with her raised arms, while she dashed 
along, as if warding off invisible enemies. It 
seemed an eternity before she stood panting on 
the cottage threshold. Too faint with fear to be 
over- wary, she staggered in and stumbled up the 
ladder, not noting whether boards creaked or not 
or even whether a light shone out from under the 
study door. 

] But the household, wrapt in slumber, was as 
oblivious of her entrance as of her exit. Safe at 
last in her own room, within sound of Del’s soft 
breathing, she undressed with chilly hands, shak- 


286 


HERMIT ISLAND.- 


ing from head to foot, let her clothes lie wherever 
they chanced to fall, and crept miserably into bed. 
Oppressed by a ghastly sense of guilt, feeling 
utterly forsaken of hope and holiness and heaven, 
the wretched child nestled up to her sister for 
very loneliness. 

“Why, Dolo, how cold you are!” murmured 
Del, drowsily, and folded her closely in her warm 
young arms. 

“She would not touch me if she knew,” 
thought Dolo, wearily, but without trying to move 
away. Her feelings all seemed dull and languid 
and she soon dropped asleep from sheer exhaus- 
tion, her dark head resting on her sister’s shoul- 
der. Even through her dreams, however, she 
heard the organ-voice of the sea, following her 
like the rebuke of God. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


Black is the beauty of the brightest day; 

The golden ball of heaven’s eternal fire, 

That danc’d with glory on the silver waves, 

Now wants the fuel that inflam’d his beams; 

And all with faintness, and for foul disgrace, 

He binds his temples with a frowning cloud. 

— Christopher Marlowe. 

V That shady day, 

Dark with more clouds than tempests are. 

— Ralph Waldo Emerson. 

D el was aroused from her rosy slumbers by 
the kitchen clock striking five. She had a 
drowsy sense that it was unusually dark for that 
hour, and then turning snugly in her bed, was 
composing herself for another nap, when across 
her mind flashed the exciting thought that this 
was the day for her trip to the mainland. In an 
instant she was upon her feet, wide-awake, dress- 
ing with all the energy of young anticipation. 


288 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Yet in the progress of her rapid toilet she did not 
fail to note, with surprise and perplexity, that 
Dole’s treasure-chest stood open and empty and 
that Dole’s clothes were scattered about the floor 
in confusion, instead of being hung across a chair, 
as they were when Del went to bed. The warm 
shawl, too, for which Del searched vainly in its 
accustomed drawer, she found lying in a heap 
under Dole’s dress. Del cast an inquiring glance 
toward her sister, but Dolo was sleeping heavily. 
And Del, her mind too full of projects to enter- 
tain difficult questions, soon dismissed the subject 
from her thoughts and ran lightly down the lad- 
der. But early as she was. Miss Lucas had been 
before her, and hot coffee, toast and slices of cold 
tongue stood on the dining-table. 

*‘Oh, goody!” exclaimed Del, careful, however, 
to speak in a lowered tone, so that her father and 
sister might not be disturbed; “we sha’n’t keep 
the boys waiting a single minute, shall we ? ” 

“I doubt whether the boys cross to-day,” sug- 
gested Miss Lucas, who was standing by the win- 
dow. “ It is a dull morning. See how heavy the 
clouds are over yonder.” 

“Oh, but the boys wouldn’t mind a little speck 
of cloud,” protested Del, her eager face falling as 
she gazed with rueful eyes at the dark masses of 
drift in the eastern sky; “and I shall die if we 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


289 


can’t go to-day. I really shall. Here come Rob 
and Nat, now.” 

The lads tramped in shivering with the cold, 
although well wrapt in rough sailor-coats, and 
readily accepted an invitation to take cups of cof- 
fee. But the talk and laughter, by command of 
Del, who was careful, for more reasons than one, 
not to awaken her father, was very quiet. 

‘‘Pretty raw and chilly out,” said Robert, cheer- 
ily, leaning against the mantel and rubbing his 
big brown hands together; “and the morning is 
about as dark as they make ’em. The day may 
clear, but I don’t like to take any risks with )^ou 
two passengers along. Guess we’d better put it 
off till to-morrow.” 

“But to-morrow’s Sunday,” protested Del, pout- 
ing as she passed the coffee, “and Monday’s an 
eternity away. Oh, the day will clear. I know 
it will. Please let’s go. Oh, Rob, please ! ” 

It was hard to resist that word and tone, and 
Robert looked doubtfully over the rim of his 
coffee-cup at Nat. 

“We might drop in and ask Cap’n Noll to take 
a squint at the sky and tell us what he thinks of 
it,” observed Nat. “He’ll hold up his finger in 
the air to feel which way the wind blows and 
look as wise as a meeting-house weather-cock.” 

“ Oh, no, no, no ! Don’t go near Cap’n Noll,” 


290 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


pleaded Del, knowing well that her bluff old 
friend would never consent to the slightest impru- 
dence where his Lady Blue-eyes was concerned. 
*^Come on, boys! Let’s hurry off. I’ve had all 
the breakfast I want. Don’t stand there balancing 
your spoon in that stupid way, Rob. I am sure it 
will be a pleasant day and, if it isn’t. Miss Lucas 
and I don’t care. Do we. Miss Lucas ? Please 
get your things on quick. I’m all ready now, 
except my cap. And the boys have had as much 
coffee as is good for them.” 

“Not to mention the fact that we’ve had all 
there is,” added Nat. “What will your father 
think of an empty coffee-pot.?” 

“Oh, Dolo can look after his breakfast, for 
once,” answered Del, whisking about the room for 
cap and shawl and purse and water-proof bag and 
memorandum. “There! I do believe I’ve got 
everything, now. But where’s Eric .? Isn’t Eric 
going ? ” 

“No,” said Robert; “he must see to the cows 
and, besides, there’s no room for him to-day. I 
half believe it’s his sulks that are working all this 
mischief with the weather. He was crosser than 
a crab because I wouldn’t take him instead of this 
Daddy Longlegs here, but Nat’s stronger at the 
oars, when the fellow is really rowing and not 
wool-gathering, and besides, Nat has a letter of 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


291 


father’s to mail — a letter which he wouldn’t trust 
to one of his unworthy brethren for his eye- 
teeth.” 

Nat clapped his hand proudly upon his breast- 
pocket. 

*‘It’s father’s letter of acceptance,” he said. 

“What.?” asked Del. “What do you mean.?” 

“Why!” stammered Nat, indignantly; “why, 
didn’t Dolo tell you last night.? Didn’t Dolo tell 
you the great news .? Well, if she isn’t the queer- 
est girl that ever I saw I ” 

“It’s precious few you ever saw, anyway, you 
near-sighted island bat,” interposed Robert. 

“But tell me, tell me!” cried Del, imperiously, 
“Oh, is it something nice about Uncle Maurice.? 
I’m so glad. Here’s Miss Lucas at last. We 
can start now and you must tell me as we walk 
down to the boats.” 

And such was the compelling power of the 
little damsel’s will that Robert and Nathan, 
absorbed in relating their wonderful tidings and 
listening to Del’s enthusiastic comments, walked 
directly past Cap’n Noll’s cottage and across the 
island, down to where the dories were drawn up 
side by side on the beach, each fastened by a 
stout rope to one of the stakes driven deep into 
the sand above the high-tide limit. But here 
Robert made a stand. 


2Q2 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“This is all wrong,” he said, decidedly. “We 
ought to have Cap’n Noll’s advice and Mr. 
Rexford’s consent. I won’t stir this boat an 
inch without them. You wait here till I come 
back. You can dance a hornpipe to keep you 
warm.” 

Del caught at the rough coat sleeve and held 
him fast. 

“You old fuss!” she exclaimed; “look at the 
East, now.” 

It was a fact that the dark masses of cloud 
were cleft and through the narrow aperture the 
sunlight was making way. The sight, take it all 
in all, was a singular one. Although not a 
shower had fallen on the island, the coast was 
completely hidden in black, slanting lines of rain. 
The storm could be watched sweeping darkly 
westward over the water. But as the shaft of 
sunshine broke through the orient clouds, the 
wavy edges of the deep, mysterious rift were irra- 
diated by a lustre of white light. One could gaze 
far up into the depths of that bright opening and 
note the peaks and domes and minarets of cloud 
that jutted forth, glistening with the crystal radi- 
ance. The sea, at first cold and leaden in lus- 
tre, now showed tints of green and silver, and 
even, far to the eastward, of rose and violet. 

“There! You see.?” said Del. “The clouds 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


293 


are breaking. It is going to be just the loveliest 
day that ever was.” 

“One sunbeam doesn’t make fair weather,” 
objected Robert; “and it’s pouring over there on 
the coast.” 

“Well, what if it is.?” retorted Del, “are you 
afraid of hurting this elegant coat of yours, or of 
getting the blacking washed off your boots .? ” 

This last was a hard hit, for Robert and Nathan 
were, as usual, bare-footed, and Del, having 
donned shoes and stockings in honor of the great 
occasion, felt superior. 

“But Miss Lucas isn’t a fish, if you are. She 
doesn’t want to go shopping in the rain,” per- 
sisted Robert, yet more feebly, as he watched the 
alabaster glory widening in the East. 

“Miss Lucas doesn’t mind,” urged Del, turning 
blue eyes bright with entreaty on the imperturb- 
able housekeeper; “do you. Miss Lucas.?” 

Miss Lucas meditated. “We have a water- 
proof bag for the things, and our clothes won’t 
spot,” she said. “Besides, I have brought an 
umbrella.” 

“Well!” said Robert, laying his strong hand 
on the gunwale of the boat, “here goes, then. 
Untie her, Nat, and we’ll trundle her down to the 
water.” 

The starting was great fun. Miss Lucas and 


294 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Del were seated in the bows, Nat took his place 
at the oars, while Robert, rolling up his trousers, 
stood at the stern knee-deep in water tugging and 
straining, as the wave receded, to shove the dory 
off. The boat, sullen at first, suddenly leapt 
upward and forward, borne seaward on the crest of 
the ebbing billow, while Robert, splashed and 
laughing, followed with a skip and a scramble and 
swung himself aboard, amid a duet of merry and 
derisive congratulations from Del and Nat. 

“Whew! But this sea has a swell on her!” 
whistled Nat, as the boat plunged from crest to 
trough and was flung again from trough to crest, 
ploughing her way through the surf; ‘Took out 
there, Rob! We’re shipping water.” 

“See here!” exclaimed Robert, thoroughly 
startled, “we are in for a rough crossing. We 
must put back, Nat, and land our passengers. I 
don’t care if we wait till Monday ourselves.” 

“Oh, for shame!” exclaimed the girl, who had 
been screaming with delight as the dory rose and 
fell; “if I’m not afraid, I shouldn’t think you’d 
be.” 

“You don’t know enough to be afraid,” replied 
Robert, with a good-humored smile. “What do 
you say, Nat.^” 

“Father’s letter must be mailed this morning,” 
replied Nat, doggedly; “and turning back isn’t 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


295 


much in our line. Likely as not the blow will 
hold off till to-morrow. Let’s go ahead.” 

But Robert still looked doubtful. 

Shall we risk it.?” he asked, appealing to Miss 
Lucas. 

The housekeeper sat as calmly in the bows of 
that careering little boat, as if she had been par- 
ing apples in her high-backed chair at home. 

“There’s not any too much time for the sew- 
ing, as it is,” she said. 

“There now!” exclaimed Del, clapping her 
hands. “ Three votes for going on ! So, Cap’n 
Rob, you’ll please stop croaking and mind the 
rudder. Oh, to think that we are really off the 
island 1 I haven’t been off the island for seven 
years, and neither has Miss Lucas. It would be 
cruel to go back now.” 

“All right,” said Robert, keeping his anxious 
gaze fixed upon the East ; “we’ll be across in three 
hours at this rate, and if it blusters after that, 
we’ll let it bluster, and spend the night on the 
coast. Pull your prettiest, Nat. I’ll spell you 
when you’re tired.” 

It was something more than an hour later that 
Dolo was aroused by hearing her father’s voice 
calling excitedly from below — 

“ Dolorosa I Dolorosa ! Are you there .? ” 

“Yes, sir,” she responded, hurriedly, spring- 


296 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


ing to her feet; “I’ll come right down. Is it 
late.?” 

“Yes. It was so dark I overslept,” responded 
the deep voice, still with that agitation and trouble 
sounding through it. “Is Delia with you.?” 

Dolo looked in bewildered fashion toward the 
bed and about the room. What did it all mean .? 
What had happened .? Had she been having bad 
dreams .? What had she done to her hand .? The 
lid of her sacred treasure-chest thrown up ! Her 
clothes lying about the floor! Del gone, and a 
torrent of wind and rain beating against the 
window ! 

“No, sir,” she answered; “isn’t Del down- 
stairs .? ” 

“No, nor Miss Lucas,” came the response, in 
a tone that had now a sharp accent of distress ; 
“and the table stands as if they had breakfasted. 
But it cannot be that those madcap boys have 
started out to take them across to the mainland in 
such a hurricane as this ! Do you know anything 
about it .? Tell me instantly.” 

“Nothing, sir,” responded a cold voice from 
above. 

Dole’s arms had fallen at her sides. She stood 
as if carved from stone. 

“They cannot have put out in this storm. 
It is utterly impossible — utterly impossible!” 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


297 


repeated Mr. Rexford, as if to reassure himself. 
“But I will go down to the boats and make sure.” 

And in a moment more Dolo heard the outside 
door close noisily, as if blown to by a gust of 
wind, and from her window she caught sight of 
her father’s tall figure, in rubber coat and cap, 
dashing at full speed across the field. 

Then Dolo fell on her knees before her empty 
treasure-chest, with a ghastly little face and sink- 
ing heart. She remembered it all now. She had 
been angry with Del and Nat and all the world 
and had tried to think of the wickedest deed that 
she could do. And cloudy hints from the old story 
of Dr. Faustus had come to her mind, and she, 
too, had determined to formally cede her soul to 
the spirit of evil. She remembered the midnight 
rites, the fire, the costly, costly sacrifice, the terri- 
fied rush homeward through the demon-peopled 
dark, the solemn, stern, rebuking call of ocean. 
But most vividly of all she remembered that she 
had cursed Del, her sister — yes, Del and Nat. 
And her new master had taken her at her word. 
Evidently prayers were promptly answered by the 
prince of darkness. Or was it the seal of the bar- 
gain ? He had bought her soul and this was his 
horrible payment. She had asked for trouble to 
come on her sister and her old playmate ; but oh ! 
she had not meant this, not anything one-half so 


2gS 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


terrible as this. They would all be drowned — 
Del and Nat and Robert and Eric and Miss Lucas 
— and she would be their murderer. And there 
would be nothing left in all the world to comfort 
her, now that her dear mamma’s picture was 
gone. She had murdered that, too. Her own 
hand had burned it in the fire. 

The hand was blistered and full of stinging 
pains that morning, but Dolo scarcely heeded it. 
Her soul was possessed by one great horror. 
Her limbs trembled and were so weak that she 
made several efforts before she could arise from 
her kneeling posture in front of the chest. At 
last she drew herself to her feet, shut and clasped 
the lid and mechanically went about her dressing. 

Then she clambered down the ladder, clinging 
to it closely and feeling sick and giddy as she 
went. Below all was chill and desolate. The 
breakfast table stood spread with the unwashed 
plates and coffee-cups and with the remains of 
the toast and tongue. Dolo ate a few morsels of 
meat to give herself strength. She felt less faint 
after that and, wrapping herself in an old water- 
proof cloak, opened the outside door. In an 
instant the bellowing gale had wrenched it from 
her grasp and Dolo found herself, with head bent 
forward and every muscle tense, battling with a 
furious storm of wind and rain. She fought her 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


299 


way through it, nevertheless, with white face 
and desperate eyes, until she stood in sight of 
the spot where the boats were beached. Cap'n 
Noll’s stout dory and the old fishing-boat were 
there, but the Yorke dory was gone. Between 
the black lines of rain she caught a glimpse of her 
father standing erect and rigid beside the boats, 
a motionless form on which the fury of the gale 
spent itself disregarded. 

Dolo did not dare, with the awful burden on 
her childish heart, go and join her father. She 
staggered a few steps in the direction of Cap’n 
Noll’s cottage and, in the confusion and darkness 
of the storm, almost ran upon the captain himself, 
hurrying with great strides to the beach. Close 
behind him followed Mr. Yorke and Eric. 

“Luff a-lee, my hearty!” shouted the captain, 
rolling to one side; “we came nigh shivering each 
other’s timbers that time. But why are you out, 
a girl like you, in such a stiffish blow as this } ” 

“Why are you.?” replied Dolo. 

“Why.?” answered Cap’n Noll, in the roaring 
voice which was always, as Nat said, his “storm- 
note” ; “here’s a man what thinks his boys put 
out to sea this morning. But I tell him it’s no 
sech a thing. Rob’s not a fool, and Nat — well, 
Nat’s not fool enough for sech a move as that.” 

“But, captain,” put in Eric, pale and scared. 


300 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“it didn’t storm when they left the house, though 
the last thing I heard Rob say to Nat as they 
went down-stairs was that he guessed they would 
have to put it off. But it wasn’t storming then. 
I got up and looked. It was only cold and cloudy. 
And I thought what muffs they would be if they 
gave it up for that.” 

“You must remember, captain,” added Mr. 
Yorke, who was paler than Eric, “that the East 
lightened very curiously and beautifully for a few 
minutes about six o’clock, and it is only within an 
hour that the tempest has struck us. It was as 
sudden as it is violent.” 

The captain emitted a half-consoling, half-con- 
temptuous growl, but the uproar of wind and sea 
was not favorable to conversation, and the party 
pressed on in silence, Cap’n Noll grasping Dolo 
strongly by the arm. Once Dolo felt, on the 
other side, a wet hand steal into hers, and turned 
to meet Eric’s shining, Tightened eyes. 

“Did Del go.?” 

Dolo never knew whether eyes or voice asked 
the question. Her own dark eyes, in their agony 
of fear, answered it, and Eric, with a choking, 
boyish sob, broke away from the group and 
rushed forward to the water’s edge. The others 
were soon beside him, Mr. Rexford having joined 
them on the way. 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


301 


“My boat is out,” said Mr. Yorke, quietly, but 
his lips were white as he spoke, “and my two 
eldest sons are in her.” 

Dolo looked at Eric and felt a vague sense of 
comfort in now for the first time clearly realizing 
that he had been left behind. She had one less 
crime to answer for, and Eric would help Uncle 
Maurice and Aunt Marion bear their losses. He 
was a comely, brave-spirited, frank-hearted boy. 
She was glad that he was standing there on the 
shore, instead of tossing in the cruel, white sea- 
foam. The waves would throw Del about easily. 
She was so light. But Nat would be awkward, 
even in the act of drowning. And Miss Lucas — 
would she change that set look of hers ? Robert 
would try to save the others. Robert always 
thought of himself last. Del’s hair would stream 
like seaweed in the foam. What wild, wretched 
thoughts were these ! But they did not seem to 
hurt her much. Perhaps her heart was broken 
already and this was the way people felt with 
broken hearts. But what was her father saying ? 

“Yes, Delia must have gone with them, also 
Miss Lucas. Delia had been eager for the trip.” 

“No!” exclaimed the captain; “no, not she! 
Not Lady Blue-eyes ! Don’t tell me she is in 
that boat — Lady Blue-eyes ! My little Lady of 
Delight ! ” 


302 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Then they did not look in one another’s faces 
nor speak again, but strove in vain to search the 
sea with their eyes. The blinding rain hid all 
but the nearest surf and though they watched 
each wave as it thundered in, it cast at their feet 
only a tangle of weeds and shells. There was 
nothing to be done there, and they all struggled 
back in silence to the other side of the island, 
Cap’n Noll, with his hand on Eric’s shoulder, for 
Uncle Maurice had given an arm to Dolo, leading 
the way to his own cottage. 

Thus began a day of such suspense, such rest- 
lessness and dread as Hermit Island had never 
known before. The situation was kept from Mrs. 
Yorke. She supposed that of course the trip had 
been given up, and her husband did not unde- 
ceive her. He let her believe that the boys were 
spending their rainy holiday at the captain’s, and, 
though she felt disappointed that they should not 
come home to dinner, habits of hospitality had so 
increased on the island since Nick was taken ill 
that she did not think it strange. Because of her 
husband’s decision to leave the island and under- 
take literary labors in earnest, she was happier 
than she had been for- years, and sat by Nick’s 
bedside hour by hour singing old-fashioned love- 
songs or telling stories of her girlhood’s home 
among the hills, with a pink flush on her faded 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


303 


cheek and a light in her sunken eyes that were as 
the pathetic shadow of her youthful beauty. 
She noticed that her husband was wan and silent, 
as he looked in upon his home for a few minutes 
from time to time during the day, but his kindly 
smile came as readily as ever, in response to 
Nick’s wise prattle, his tone to her was even 
gentler than its wont, and she merely thought, if 
she theorized upon the subject at all, that he was 
grave in view of the return from this solitary, 
dreamy existence that he loved, to the activities 
and ambitions of what she deemed practical life. 

At the Brimblecomb cottage, the hours dragged 
by as if winged with lead. At intervals, while 
daylight lasted, one or another of the men would 
go out to patrol the beach. Dolo knew too well 
in her shuddering heart for what they were look- 
ing — what ghastly drift they thought might be 
tossed on shore. Then they would talk a little in 
low, controlled voices, saying over and over the 
same things — that the dory was well-built, that 
it would have been in less danger than a sail-boat, 
that the boys were strong and skillful and coura- 
geous, that by to-morrow the captain could go 
over to the coast and make inquiries. Then they 
would pace the floor, or throw more drift-wood on 
the fire, or plunge out into the storm again. 
Grandma Brimblecomb bustled about preparing 


304 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


meals which no one, not even Eric, could eat, and 
plying the exhausted patrolmen, as they came in 
one by one, drenched to the skin, with hot drinks 
and dry clothing. Dripping garments hung all 
day long before the fireplace, and Mr. Rexford 
and Mr. Yorke moved about with difficulty in the 
captain’s capacious blouses and trousers. Poor 
Eric had to don one of Grandma Brimblecomb’s 
bright-colored wrappers, in which he looked like 
a waif from far Japan. Baby Merry, frightened 
scarcely less by the solemn hush within the house 
than by the howling tempest without, trotted 
from one to another for consolation. Mr. Yorke, 
who was the most self-possessed of them all, 
lifted her to his knee and told her a fairy-tale, 
and Mr. Rexford, though his voice broke when he 
tried to respond to her baby chatter, walked the 
floor with the child in his arms until she fell 
asleep. Presently Cap’n Noll came in wet and 
panting , from his tramp, and Mr. Rexford, after 
darting the one look of fearful inquiry into his 
eyes and finding there no confirmation of the 
general dread, laid Baby Merry on the lounge, 
pulled on his rubber coat and cap and went out 
to take his turn at the dreary sea-shore vigil. Mr. 
Yorke had gone over to his own home, to see that 
all was well with his wife and Nick. Grandma 
Brimblecomb was stirring some beef tea for Dolo, 


TAKEN AT HER WORD. 


305 


whose wild and haggard look troubled the dear 
old dame. Eric had thrown himself, in his gay- 
flowered robe, on the floor at Dolo’s feet, hoping 
to get and give a little comfort, but the girl, 
sitting upright in her chair, with brown hands 
tightly clasped in her lap and black eyes staring 
straight before her, had repulsed him rudely. 
The boy drew away, hurt and almost angry, and 
took refuge with Major under the lounge. Baby 
Merry, awakened suddenly by a violent gust of 
wind that rattled the windows noisily and shook 
the cottage in every timber, sat up in terror, her 
little lip quivering, but her plucky baby soul still 
refusing to confess its fears. 

“ Gramp,” she piped ; “ if you’re ’fraid. I’ll 
come and hold on to your hand.” 

But for once her grandfather did not notice her. 
His brows were bent and he was listening to the 
storm. Baby Merry, bewildered, crept softly to 
Dolo’s side, but Dolo, as she had done several 
times before during the day, warded the child off 
with her arm, whispering hoarsely, “ Don’t touch 
me ! ” with such intensity in her look and manner 
that the puzzled Baby promptly retreated. Grand- 
ma Brimblecomb continually fluttered about Dolo, 
bringing her cordials, feeling her pulse and coax- 
ing her to lie down ; but Dolo scarcely seemed to 
see or to hear her. To the captain’s gruff words 


3o6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


of cheer she answered nothing. Uncle Maurice 
sat down beside her, when he returned, and tried 
to talk with her, but she buried her face in her 
hands and would not look at him nor make reply. 
Her father, later in the afternoon, struck by the 
misery in her face and attitude, laid his hand 
upon the black head in passing and bent over his 
strange little daughter in wistful sympathy ; but 
she shook his touch off so fiercely that he flushed 
crimson and turned away. Even in the preoccu- 
pation of personal grief they all marvelled at 
Dolo. They said to one another that they had 
not known she cared for Del so much. And 
meanwhile the poor, guilt-burdened, desolate child, 
to whom it seemed as if mere grief must be a beau- 
tiful and blessed thing, was conscious of little save 
the one unspeakable thought beating through and 
through her weary brain. “ If they knew that I 
had done it ! If they knew I was the mur- 
derer! Not one of them would ever touch me 
again — would ever speak gently to me — would 
ever look kindly at me — if they only knew I ” 


CHAPTER XV. 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


Oh, then how bright and quick a light 
Doth brush my heart and scatter night ! 

— Henry Vaughan. 


Teach me Thy love to know; 

That this new light, which now I see. 

May both the M'ork and workman show — 

Then by a sunbeam I will climb to Thee. 

— George Herbert. 

H ouse ahoy! if ever I saw such sleepy- 
heads ! House ahoy I ” 

It was Robert’s voice, Robert’s own clear, rich 
young voice ringing through the glimmering 
dawn of Sunday morning. There were no ill 
tidings behind that voice, be sure. It was as 
blithesome as a trumpet-herald of the sunshine, 
The call arose from beneath his father’s cham- 
ber window. In an instant the window was 
thrown up and Cap’n Noll’s weather-beaten face, 
beaming with joy, was thrust out over the sill. 


3o8 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


You land-lubber! You rascal, you I Why in 
the name of the Old Harry did you put out to sea 
in the face of the heaviest blow of the season, eh ? 
Pretty sailor you are! Don’t you know enough 
to stay in when it rains ? You young pirate ! ” 

While the happy captain was still in the midst 
of his vituperative welcome, the outer door flew 
open and Grandma Brimblecomb, in the same 
gay-flowered wrapper that had transformed Eric 
into a Japanese prince the day before and in a 
fluted nightcap more awry than ever, clasped 
Robert with two chubby arms tight about the 
neck and fell to sobbing on his shoulder. 

“Oh, my boy! My dear boy! Bless the 
Lord! If Jonah had a grandmother, I know just 
how she felt. Where are the others ? Is Del 
safe — the precious child And our clever boy 
Nat.? And that faithful soul. Miss Lucas.? Tell 
me quick.” 

“Every one of them,” said Robert, somewhat 
embarrassed by the nightcap and the warmth 
of the embrace; “but where are father and 
mother .? ” 

“They are at our house, dear boy, with Eric. 
Your mother won’t let Eric out of her sight. We 
kept it from her all yesterday, but at night your 
father had to tell her, and she was in such a tak- 
ing I sent them over home for fear Nick would 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


309 


get wind of it and it might bring back his fever. 
The captain and I, with Baby, shifted quarters, 
too, and came over here to look after him. He’s 
slept like an angel all night — the darling! But 
I take it he’s the only one who has. Even Baby 
Merry has been restless and cried out in her 
dreams. But have Del and Miss Lucas gone 
home.^ I never saw a child suffer like Dolo. 
Few of us know what a tender heart that girl 
has, under all her queerness. And where is 
Nat.?” 

Del and Nat and Miss Lucas are over on the 
coast,” replied Robert, gently drawing away from 
the plump arms that were nearly choking him ; 
‘‘one of the boatmen will bring them across as 
soon as the tide turns. But I knew you would all 
be anxious, especially mother, and as soon as the 
storm went down, an hour or so after midnight, I 
took the dory and pulled over.” 

“Oh, but wasn’t it dark, dear boy, and rough .?” 

“Dark and rough both,” laughed Robert; “but 
I was afraid life would be darker and rougher for 
the rest of you till you knew that the crazy 
chicks had turned out ducks. Much as ever, 
though. We hadn’t been out half an hour before 
the tempest struck us. Then we tried our best to 
pull back, but the tide was against us, and we 
shipped water so fast it took all hands of us to 


310 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


bale. I tell you, things looked pretty bad about 
then. Del cried so hard I told her she would 
swamp us, but she helped bale like a good one, 
and so did Miss Lucas. We should have gone to 
the bottom sure, though, if it hadn’t been for a 
fishing-smack that hove in sight just in time. 
They had taken in every stitch of sail and were 
pitching like fun, themselves, but they saw our 
pickle and hauled us on board by ropes. That 
was about the liveliest job I ever put through. 
Del went first, and then Miss Lucas, slung up like 
bags of meal. Del sang out at every bump, but 
Miss Lucas never screeched once. Then Nat 
and I fastened lines to the dory, so the men could 
hoist her up astern, and went over the ropes our- 
selves sailor-fashion. Only Nat’s long legs got 
tangled in the lines, and the smack rolled and 
gave him a ducking. But he had a good grip and 
came up all right, though I thought for the min- 
ute he was done for and wondered how I could 
ever come home and tell mother. I must be off 
to her now. It’s a shame to leave her to worry 
a minute longer.” 

Don’t go howlin’ like a nor’easter at her port- 
holes, you swabber ! ” called the delighted captain 
after him. ‘'You’ll scare her into fits. A sailor 
that lets himself get cotched in a hurricane half 
an hour from shore ! If ever I saw sech foolish- 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


3II 

ness! You’re not fit to sail chips on a mud- 
puddle.” 

“Ay, ay, sir!” called back Robert, merrily; 
“every fool must have his day.” And the manly 
young fellow ran off through the gray dusk in the 
direction of the Brimblecomb cottage, pursued as 
far as he could hear by the old seaman’s jovial 
bellow. 

Mrs. Yorke, after a long night of wildest, bit- 
terest weeping, had sobbed herself into a brief 
slumber, still holding fast the hand of Eric, who 
had fallen asleep in a chair beside her bed; but 
the father kept vigil still and was standing upon 
the piazza, his sorrowful, prayerful eyes watching 
the East for the first fair flush of day, when his 
eldest son bounded up the steps and clasped him 
in such a rough-coated, vigorous hug as there was 
no mistaking for any ghostly greeting. 

“My son!” murmured Mr. Yorke. “Thank 
God! And your brother.? Is he alive.?” 

“Alive! Never more so,” answered Robert, so 
lightly one would not easily have believed how 
fast the tears were coursing down his sun-burned 
cheeks. “Trust that fellow for being alive! 
Nat’s all right, father, and the others, too.” 

“God is good,” said Mr. Yorke. “I thought I 
knew before how well I loved my boys, but yester- 
day and this last night have taught me many 


312 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


things. Let me go now and break this blessed 
news to your mother.” 

But when Mrs. Yorko had wept her fill of joy- 
ful tears on Robert’s strong young shoulder, when 
his loving arms had folded her close, and his 
cheery voice, like sweetest music in his mother’s 
ears, had told her all his story, when Eric had 
been well tousled and tumbled for his impertinent 
comments, then Mr. Yorke hurried the rescued 
lad away to lighten the heavy hearts beneath the 
Rexford roof. 

That desolate cottage had been unvisited of 
slumber all the night. Neither Mr. Rexford nor 
Dolo had gone to their respective rooms. Dolo 
could not bear to enter the chamber where she 
had slept the night before with Del’s warm arm 
thrown over her, where the empty treasure-chest 
stood to reproach her with the ruin she had 
wrought. She had sat all night on the wood- 
box, close up in the chimney corner, rigid and 
wretched. She thought that she should never 
sleep again. 

Her father, pacing the floor and glancing now 
and then, by the dim lamplight, at the dining- 
table still spread with the remnants of that hasty 
morning meal, had a certain sense of comfort in 
Dolo’s presence. He was surprised and touched 
at the depth of feeling the girl was showing. 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


313 


Once he brought a cushion, and once a shawl, but 
she refused each by a quick motion of the hand. 
She did not wish to be made comfortable. She 
did not wish any care or kindness. She deserved 
every misery that body or soul could bear. And 
not one of the mourners on the island, good as 
they had been to her all the day, would ever help 
or pity her again, if they knew that it was she 
who had done the murder. For years passed over 
Dole's head before she ceased to believe that the 
storm was sent by the spirit of darkness in 
answer to her impious midnight prayer. 

A sudden knock came at the outer door. Mr. 
Rexford started. 

Perhaps her body has been washed ashore," 
was the sickening thought that flashed across his 
mind. 

But Dolo sprang with kindling eyes to her feet. 
'‘Rob! It is Rob’s knock." 

Mr. Rexford took three great strides to the 
door and flung it open. There stood Robert, 
veritable flesh and blood, smiling brightly in the 
clear gleam of morning. The coarse shades had 
been drawn in the dining-room and the watchers 
there had not realized that the sable night had 
melted into golden day. But the pure, fresh light 
poured into the dreary room, making the lamp- 
flame yellow and dim. The cool, sweet air 


314 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


smote on that heavy atmosphere like courage on 
despair. 

Before Mr. Rexford could speak Dolo had 
sprung before him and clutched Robert’s coat- 
sleeve. 

“Del.?” she asked, with a wild, beseeching 
glance. “Del.?” 

“ Del is safe,” said Robert, simply, looking with 
his frank gaze straight into the distressful eyes 
and placing his big palm comfortingly over the 
little hand that grasped his sleeve ; “ Del is safe, 
and Miss Lucas, and Nat. They will all be here 
before noon. Pshaw! don’t faint away! Wait 
till Grandma Brimblecomb comes. Whatever 
shall we do with you.? Here, Mr. Rexford, a 
glass of water, quick! No, no; don’t throw it in 
her face ! Gracious ! She’s in more danger of 
being drowned now than Del ever was.” 

But Dolo, gasping and choking under the lib- 
eral shower-bath to which her father, with a zeal 
that outran discretion, had treated her, did not 
faint. She burst out crying instead. She had 
supposed — poor child! — that she should never 
shed another tear, but now she threw herself upon 
the floor in such a passion of sobs and weeping 
that her father and Robert were utterly dismayed. 
Jesting, coaxing, scolding, all these having failed 
in turn, her father stooped and, with a great soft- 


GRACE OF PARDON. 5 1 5 

eniPxg of the heart, unceremoniously gathered up 
his little daughter into his arms and sat down in a 
chair with the astonished child held firmly against 
his breast. 

Now put your head down on my shoulder and 
cry your trouble out,” he said; “I want to listen 
to Robert’s story.” 

And Robert, taking the hint, took a chair as 
well and related his adventures once again, feel- 
ing, as he laughingly remarked, like a new edition 
of the Arabian Nights. As the recital went on, 
Dolo’s convulsive sobs gradually subsided and at 
the close she was lying motionless and silent, with 
her pale face hidden against her father’s coat- 
collar, too tired to speak or think — only vaguely 
conscious how good it was to feel those protecting 
arms around her. 

The others did not arrive until late in the fore- 
noon. Eric, mounted on a tipsy barrel, which 
Dolo considerately steadied for him on the high- 
est point of the bluff, had been sweeping the 
horizon with Cap’n Noll’s spy-glass for two hours 
before his search was rewarded. But when the 
news finally flew over the island that a boat was 
in sight, coming across from the coast, great was 
the excitement which prevailed. Mrs. Yorke con- 
fided her petted Nick, in default of a human 
nurse, to Major’s guardianship, and hurried down 


3i6 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


to the beach, leaning on her husband’s arm. 
Mr. Rexford was there, and the captain and Dolo, 
who looked so wan that Robert threw down his 
coat on the wet sand and made her recline on 
its rough and somewhat briny folds. Eric was 
beside himself with joy, standing on his head and 
clapping his feet, walking out on his hands into 
the surf, waving his hat and shouting himself 
hoarse in the voice and purple in the face long 
before a single figure in the boat could be distin- 
guished. Grandma Brimblecomb was occupied 
in preparing a general feast, not of the fatted calf, 
but of Eric’s two plumpest chickens, and could 
not, being high priestess of the kitchen, forsake 
the savory mysteries of the gravy-pan ; but Baby 
Merry trotted gleefully down as her representa- 
tive, flourishing the stars and stripes. Dolo 
snatched the child into her arms, flag and all, and 
covered the roguish little face with kisses, until 
Baby Merry felt assured that the world was its 
own sunshiny self again. 

“Yesterday’s all gone, isn’t it?” asked the 
mite, cuddling up close in Dole’s embrace. 

“Oh, I hope so,” sighed poor Dolo, fervently. 

“Where’s it gone.?” persisted the small philos- 
opher; “where do the yesterdays goto when the 
to-days come .? ” 

Dolo shook her head, and Baby Merry, alarmed 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


317 


at seeing the look of pain clouding once more the 
dear dark eyes, hastened to change the subject. 

‘‘Oh, I see,” the sage cherub remarked, in an 
off-hand manner, pounding Eric’s legs with her 
flag-stick; “you don’t know. ’Spect likely that’s 
one of the things nobody knows but God. Never 
mind ! He’ll tell us when we go to Heaven. 
That’s time ’nough.” 

The boat came nearer and nearer. Bending 
strongly to the oars was the same grizzled fisher- 
man of uncertain temper who had brought Mr. 
Grafton to the island. Nat was at the tiller. Miss 
Lucas, her lap piled high with brown-paper pack- 
ages, sat composedly in the bows, and Del, her 
winsome face aglow, was using her handkerchief 
alternately for waving enthusiastic greetings and 
wiping away the tears. 

As the boat plunged and pitched shoreward 
through the heavy surf, Del leaned impetuously 
forward and stretched out both arms to the group 
that waited there. This sight was too much for 
Cap’n Noll and he dashed in recklessly through 
the tossing foam, caught up his Lady Blue-eyes 
and brought her triumphantly ashore on his shoul- 
der. Eric, fired with a spirit of emulation, 
splashed through the waves with equal gallantry 
and tried to induce Miss Lucas, who weighed a 
good two pounds for every one of his, to entrust 


3i8 hermit iseand. 

herself to him ; but the sedate housekeeper gave 
him the waterproof bag instead and was herself 
decorously jumped ashore by Mr. Yorke. Nat 
landed with an ungainly skip, but his mother 
sprang to meet him as joyously as if he had been 
a heaven-descended Apollo. And then there was 
such a confusion of hugging, kissing and hand- 
shaking, such a tumult of sobbing and laughter, 
that if it had not been for the presence of mind 
displaved by that admirable woman Miss Lucas, 
the fruits of this so eventful shopping expedition 
might have been washed out to sea to be food for 
the fishes. 

But Robert, seeing the housekeeper’s exertions 
to catch the packages as the boatman rapidly 
tossed them ashore, came nimbly to her assistance 
and shouted an invitation to the fisherman, when 
no more bundles were forthcoming, to land and 
take dinner with them. 

‘^No, thankee,” growled the grim skipper; “no, 
thankee. Neighbors is neighbors an’ ’tother folks 
is ’tother folks. You don’t want any furrin salt 
on your pertaters this here noon. Put up your • 
purse, young man. I don’t take money for break- 
in’ the Sabbath day to keep it holy. This here is 
a work o’ marcy an’ a present to the little gal as 
took sech a fancy to my Nanny-boat. Tell her I 
shall allays think the better o’ my Nancy for 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


319 


carryin’ sech a purty cargo. Good-day to ye 
all ! ” 

And with a powerful pull at his oars the boat- 
man shot out of hearing, Del kissing her hand to 
him in return for a parting flourish from the 
dingy old tarpaulin. 

Up at the Brimblecomb cottage the welcomes 
had all to be gone through with again, the rosy 
little dame, who had been bustling about to get 
her dinner on the table, letting the chickens cool 
on the platter and the gravy boil over on the 
stove, while she flew about from one to another of 
the prodigals, embracing each in turn, including 
the big, blushing Robert, who thought privately 
that he had borne his share at dawn, and then in 
her enthusiasm beginning all over again. When 
the company were finally seated around the hospi- 
table board, when Uncle Maurice had said grace, 
and the blustering captain, much badgered by 
Grandma Brimblecomb’s incessant criticisms and 
directions, had finally succeeded in carving the 
fowls to her satisfaction, the dinner proceeded in 
merry fashion enough, though voices had a curi- 
ous way of breaking in the middle of a sentence 
and no one was surprised at any moment to 
see his neighbor whisking away a tear. The 
events of the preceding day, on the island as 
well as off, were related over and over, amid 


320 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


a general out-pouring of mingled condolence and 
congratulation. 

Dolo was very quiet, but her eyes shone like 
stars. She wondered inwardly that such a wicked 
girl as she dared be so happy, but some way she 
could not help it. It was no time to think of her- 
self — not even of her sins. God might punish 
her any way he liked, since he had not punished 
her by bringing death and grief upon the inno- 
cent. He had spared the boat-crew, because they 
were good and because people loved them so. 
That was just and kind. She was well content in 
her heart that it was God who was to punish her 
— God, and not another. But she need not think 
of punishment yet. That would be for by and 
by. This noon she could be glad with all the 
rest. 

Nat was the only member of the party who 
seemed downcast. 

“What’s wrong, my boy.?” asked Mr. Yorke, 
quietly, putting his hand on Nat’s knee under 
the table. 

'Ht’s — it’s your letter, father,” stammered Nat, 
turning red as all eyes were bent upon him ; “ I 
tried so hard to keep it safe, but when I got my 
ducking, there wasn’t a dry inch left on me, and 
the letter was so soaked I couldn’t mail it. I’m 
so sorry, father. Your answer will be late.” 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


321 


“Nonsense, my son. The matter is not so 
pressing as all that. There’s no harm done,” 
replied the father, huskily, the tears — tears lay 
so near the edges of the eyes that day — starting 
at the boy’s look and tone. 

“You should have seen that fellow with his 
precious letter,” laughed Robert. “He felt worse 
about the chance of getting that wet than about 
the likelihood of the whole of us being drowned. 
Caesar with hfs Commentaries was nothing to 
him.” 

But Mr. Yorke stroked Nat’s angular knee, 
until the lad choked over filial affection, or a 
chicken-bone, or possibly a combination of the 
two, and had to retire in confusion to the wood- 
shed, Grandma Brimblecomb skurrying after him 
with a glass of water and Eric kindly attending to 
thump his brother on the back. 

When the feast of rejoicing was over, Grandma 
Brimblecomb began to heap a large dinner-plate 
with select morsels. 

“Dolo dear,” she called, “do you feel able to 
take this over to the Hermit.? You said he ate 
the last chicken dinner I sent him.” 

Dolo started eagerly forward. 

“Yes, indeed I feel able. The poor Hermit! 
I forgot all about him and he seemed ill night 
before last. Oh, let me go right away! His 


322 


HERMIT ISLAND. ' 


roof is just a sieve and it did pour so hard 
yesterday.” 

“We will walk over with you, Delia and I,” said 
her father. “We will not go near enough to 
frighten your friend, but this plate is too heavy 
for a little girl who never closed her eyes all last 
night. And what is this about the Hermit’s 
roof.? Does it leak.? We must have it mended 
before the autumn rains come.” 

This was Dole’s opportunity and, as they 
walked, she poured out to the tall, grave man by 
her side, who was so kind and gentle it did 
not seem possible that he could be one and the 
same with the dreaded father of all these years, 
her fears and anxieties for the old recluse. Mr. 
Rexford listened thoughtfully and finally promised 
the Hermit house-room for the severe weather, in 
case Dolo could induce him, as was more than 
improbable, to accept the offer. 

How strange it all was ! Dolo felt as if she 
were walking in a dream. When would her 
punishment begin.? Here was her father on one 
side carrying the Hermit’s dinner for her, and 
here was Del on the other clinging to her hand. 
Del was trying to speak, but hesitated and 
flushed. That was not like Del. Del had some- 
thing to tell her. What could it be .? 

“ Oh, Dolo ! ” said Del, while their father list- 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


323 


ened silently, “ I have been such a selfish sister. 
It is so easy to be selfish. I didn’t half know how 
bad I was till yesterday, but everything looked 
new and different to me in those minutes when 
the boat was almost sinking. There weren’t any 
make-believes then. Oh, I never meant to be 
horrid and selfish — I never meant it; but I’ve 
always expected to have the best and most of 
everything and I’ve always had it. This going to 
school is like the rest. I expected all the time 
that I should be the one to go, and you the one to 
stay, and it seemed right enough and natural that 
way. But I’m ashamed of myself, Dolo, truly I 
am, and I want to tell you that I’m not going. 
It’s you. And it’s all settled. It’s too late now 
to change, whatever you say. For all the things 
we bought, we bought for you. We went about 
shopping in the pouring rain, with the wind 
nearly blowing us off our feet and turning Miss 
Lucas’ umbrella inside out, and I never had such 
fun in my life. It’s no end nicer getting pretty 
things for you than for me. And everything is 
for you. I’m so glad it’s too late for you to help 
it. We bought your colors and your sizes and 
gave your measures to the dressmaker. So you 
may just pack your trunk for Colorado. And I 
shall stay with father, on this dear, dear little 
island I thought I should never see again, and try 


324 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


to make things cozier for him at home, if he’ll let 
me.” 

“Oh, no, no, no!” gasped Dolo. “I don’t 
deserve it. I can’t take it. I ought to have bad 
things happen to me, not good things. I mustn’t 

go-” 

“You must, though,” retorted Del, blithely, 
swinging her sister’s hand; “for I won’t.” 

“Neither will I,” said Dolo, firmly. 

“Well, really!” laughed Mr. Rexford, though 
his eyelashes glistened queerly in the sunshine, 
“this is a new dilemma.” 

But at this point a sharp cry broke from Dolo’s 
lips. 

“See!” she cried; “oh, see! The Hermit’s 
hut is down.” And in an instant the girl, wring- 
ing her hands, had sped away with winged feet. 

Mr. Rexford and Del looked after her with 
startled glances and then followed at the best of 
their speed. The Hermit’s hovel was a heap of 
ruins. It was too evident that the violent gale 
had blown the crazy structure over. But where 
was the Hermit himself.? Had he perished 
beneath the wreck of his lonely refuge .? A faint 
groan made answer. Mr. Rexford’ s strong arm 
hurled the boards left and right, until he came 
upon the emaciated form of the old man, bruised 
and broken, but not yet devoid of life, Dolo 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


325 


threw herself on her knees beside that poor, 
pathetic figure, the old butternut coat stained 
through and through with blood. 

The Hermit, with the stir about him and the 
breath of the salt wind upon his face, roused to 
fleeting consciousness and smiled his shadowy 
smile up into the pitiful dark eyes bent over him. 

‘‘Wallet,” he whispered. “Pocket.” 

Dole’s trembling fingers found the wallet and, 
obeying the Hermit’s glance, gave it to her father. 

The Hermit looked toward Mr. Rexford earn- 
estly and feebly stirred his chill, gray hand, laying 
it on Dole’s. 

“For — her,” he whispered, with increasing 
difficulty; “only — friend.” 

Then he seemed to sleep, but suddenly the dim 
eyes opened wide. Their brightening gaze was 
fixed on some object that the others could not 
see. 

“The wood is sawed through,” he said, quite 
distinctly; “it falls at last. And the light is all 
about him.” 

In a moment more Mr. Rexford gently drew 
Dole’s hand from under the Hermit’s palm and 
dropped his handkerchief over the silent face. 

The next day at twilight, as the little group of 
islanders moved softly away from around an open 
grave, Robert and Nat remaining to give the 


326 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


sleeping form its coverlet of earth, Uncle Maurice, 
who had read the solemn service, laid his hand 
tenderly on Dolo’s shoulder. 

“Do not grieve for him longer, dear child,” he 
said. “His life-shadow is already lost in the light 
of God. It was hard at the end, but we will trust 
that he was unconscious in the main and did not 
suffer overmuch. You were the one comfort of 
his later years and the gift he has left you in 
grateful memory will make it possible for both 
Del and yourself to go away to school for this 
one year at least. And we will hope that the 
future is keeping happy secrets. But the best 
of all is to remember that it was given you to 
minister to this saddened and bewildered spirit. 
He called you his ‘only friend’. You should 
be glad to-night, my dear, as well as sorrowful.” 

“But I do not understand,” sobbed Dolo ; “peo- 
ple are so good to me, and beautiful things keep 
happening, for it is more beautiful than sad, 
though I never supposed that I could miss him so 
much, to know he is at rest. I would rather go 
away and leave him lying there than rocking him- 
self back and forth on his doorstep, singing that 
unhappy song of his. Do you think they will teach 
him gladder songs in Heaven ? But I have been a 
wicked, wicked girl — I can’t tell you how wicked 
— and God does not punish me to make me good.” 


GRACE OF PARDON. 


327 


“Love and pardon, joy and blessing are among 
God’s ways of making us good,” said Uncle 
Maurice, dreamily; and Dolo, a rebel no longer, 
folded by the summer twilight, calmed by the 
grave music of the sea, bowed her young head in 
her first adoring sense of the Divine magna- 
nimity, the large forgiveness and loving tender- 
ness of God. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


And lo ! from opening clouds I saw emerge 
The loveliest moon that ever silvered o’er 
A shell from Neptune’s goblet — she did soar 
So passionately bright, my dazzled soul 
Commingling with her ardent spheres did roll 
Through clear and cloudy. 

— John Keats. 

H ere come the boys,” said Del. 

She was on her knees before a half-packed 
trunk. It was a shabby, old-fashioned little trunk, 
and her father was busy at the lid with ham- 
mer and tacks. Miss Lucas was sitting by the 
window, straining her eyes in the fading light 
to finish a piece of sewing she had in hand. 
Dolo, who had just been wiping the tea-plates and 
tea-cups, was hanging up her towel to dry. It 
was a warm August evening and the door stood 
wide open. In trooped the boys without the cere- 
mony of knocking, Eric leading the way, Robert 
following and Nat awkwardly bringing up the 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


329 


rear. Behind them at a short distance followed 
Grandma Brimblecomb and Cap’n Noll, Baby 
Merry being perched on her grandfather’s broad 
shoulder. 

^‘Come out and see the moonrise, girls,” pro- 
posed Eric, eagerly ; “ it’s going to be hunky- 
dory.” 

“Oh, I wish we could !” exclaimed Del; “but 
look at this trunk.” 

“Pshaw, we’ll help you,” said Nat, advancing 
to the front; “what goes next This jigger 
here.^ I’ll ram it in for you.” 

And he made a dive toward a dainty hat, 
trimmed with a cherry ribbon. 

Del screamed and beat him back with frantic 
little hands. 

“ Go away ! We won’t have any blundering 
boys among our pretty new things. Take him 
olf, Rob.” 

“No good Samaritans wanted around here,” 
said Robert, cheerfully, collaring his brother. 
“Stand back and mind your business! What 
do you know about girls’ boarding-school duds.^ 
You’d jam that nice little kinney into an old 
shoe and call yourself a friend to the human 
race.” 

“I join the great host of the unappreciated,” 
growled Nat, submissively retiring. 


330 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


But now Del had turned her wrath on Robert. 
‘‘Old shoes, indeed! Do you think we have any 
room for old shoes in that trunk That’s all 
you know about it.” 

“Well, I didn’t exactly suppose girls went bare- 
foot in boarding-school,” remarked Robert, with a 
mischievous glance at the little brown heel that 
peeped out from under the gray flannel skirt, 
where Del still knelt on the floor. 

“We’ve left our old shoes for you boys to 
throw after us to-morrow morning for good luck,” 
said Dolo, briefly. 

“Don’t take one of Rob’s by mistake,” put in 
Nat, revengefully; “ ’twould swamp the boat.” 

“I’ll swamp you,” observed Robert, over his 
shoulder. “You’ve been out of temper ever since 
we drew lots.” 

For the boys had resorted to this ancient and 
honorable device to determine which of them 
should accompany the party on the morrow, since 
there would be room for but one of the three. It 
had been settled that Cap’n Noll should take with 
him his Lady Blue-eyes and also Mr. Rexford, 
who desired personally to put his daughters into 
Mr. Grafton’s charge, that gentleman, for dread 
of seasickness, awaiting their arrival on the coast. 
In the Yorke boat, which was a little larger, 
would go the trunk, with Uncle Maurice, who had 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


331 


business on the mainland, Dolo and Robert, for 
so the fates decreed. 

“ Oh, hang it all ! Stop fooling and come out 
and see the moonrise,” pleaded Eric, who was no 
less sensitive than Nat on the subject of the lots. 
“It’s the last full moon we’ll see together on Her- 
mit Island for nobody knows how long — maybe 
forever.” 

The boy’s last words were drowned in a burst 
of expostulation from the indignant quartette, 
whose parts, as nearly as they could be distin- 
guished, ran thus. 

“ Oh, Eric ! ” “ Who’ll kick him for a nickel } ” 

“Next summer.” “Dry up!” 

“Don’t go to throwing cold water on ice,’' 
added Nat, in a concluding growl. “What’s the 
use, as Shakespeare says: — or words to that effect 
— of painting indigo blue.? Don’t we feel glum 
enough already, without your croaking like Poe’s 
raven .? Get out with you I ” 

And the two lads went down upon the floor 
together in a brotherly rough-and-tumble. 

“What’s all this.?” said Mr. Rexford, who had 
been welcoming Grandma Brimblecomb and the 
captain. “What’s this four-legged bunch of boy 
doing under my feet.? Off with you, every one! 
Only don’t be out late, for we want to start bright 
and early in the morning.” 


332 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


The boys had not yet ceased to stand somewhat 
in awe of Mr. Rexford and at his command they 
scuddled to the door. But the girls lingered, torn 
by conflicting desires. 

“Why, father, we can’t be spared,” said Del, 
with an air of injured dignity. 

“I can get on faster without them,” observed 
Miss Lucas, without raising her eyes from her 
sewing. 

Del pouted and Dolo shrugged her left shoul- 
der. Then they both laughed and followed the 
boys toward the door, but turned again on the 
threshold. 

“Miss Lucas, you’ll spoil your eyes,” remon- 
strated Del. 

Perhaps something was already wrong with the 
housekeeper’s expressionless orbs of vision. It is 
certain that she was blinking queerly as she bent 
over her work, and there was almost a quaver in 
her dull tones as she answered — 

“There’ll be nothing left to see after to-mor- 
row. It’s no matter if I do spoil them to-night.” 

“Oh, let me stay and help!” cried Del, with 
affectionate impulsiveness, running back and try- 
ing to pull the unfinished garment from Miss 
Lucas’ hand. 

“No, no; run along with the boys — poor fel- 
lows!” said Grandma Brimblecomb; “but look 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


333 


here first, my dears, at the lunch I’ve put up for 
you to take to-morrow. I knew in the hurry none 
of you would think of that. See, Del, here is the 
kissing-crust you like, and these are Dole’s favor- 
ite snuckadoodles. No, I shan’t let you see thej 
rest. That is to be for a surprise. Del, child, 
stop peeking under that napkin. Oh, I don’t 
mind if you do see those, little pry-nose. They 
are the very snappiest gingersnaps I ever made. 
But the surprise is at the bottom of the basket. 
Dear, dear, whatever shall I do without my 
girlies.^ But now run along. You children 
ought to have a good-by stroll together. I’ll 
stay and help Miss Lucas. That’s what I came 
over for. And I shall be down at the boats to 
see you off to-morrow morning.” 

‘‘Won’t you please come with us, father.?” 
asked Dolo, shyly. 

Mr. Rexford looked surprised and pleased. 

“Thank you. Dolorosa,” he said. “I’ll come a 
little later and bring my daughters home.” 

“No, come now,” commanded Baby Merry, 
from her eminence. “ Gramp is coming now. 
We’re going to see moony.” 

“No, we’re not, chuckie,” protested the captain. 
“It’s your bed-time and I’m going to take you 
home.” 

“If you do,” said Baby Merry, sweetly, “I’ll 


334 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


scream all the way and not go to sleep till 
fornever.” 

‘‘You’ll cotch it, if you’re naughty,” said Cap’n 
Noll, severely. 

“Naughty yourself!” retorted Baby. Speak 
to me that way ’gain, an’ Mr. Monk an’ I we’il 
get right down off your shoulder an’ walk with 
Dolo. Good people go to heaven, gramp. Bad 
people go to hell, gramp. How do you feel now, 
gramp ? ” 

“O-li-ver Crom-well 'Qr'm-h\Q- comb nter- 
posed the grandmother, wrinkling up her rosy 
face, as she shook her head at the unregenerate 
infant, into an expression of mournful disapproval, 
while her chubby sides were shaking with secret 
laughter; “you’ll never have a particle of disci- 
pline, if you live to be as big as a whale. Why 
do you want to get up a scene with the child this 
last night.? You know she’ll have her own way 
in the end.” 

Baby emphasized her grandmother’s position by 
tousling and pulling the bushy whiskers, and the 
colossal captain, as usual, yielded a crestfallen 
submission. 

So the moon-gazers proceeded to the beach, Del 
racing ahead with the boys, and Dolo walking 
soberly beside Cap’n Noll, occasionally pressing 
to her cheek Baby Merry’s dangling little foot. 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


335 


The sunset light still lingered in the West. A 
broad band of salmon, merging into lavender, lay 
along the horizon. The clumps of beach-grass 
were blanched in the strange twilight. Throwing 
themselves down on the beach, where the sand 
was soft and dry, the little company of friends, 
chatting in lowered tones, watched for the rising 
of the moon. They had not long to wait. An 
orange glow that ran far up the sky heralded her 
stately coming, and suddenly as if from out the 
depths of the ocean the moon sprang round and 
red, casting a shaft of ruddiest light far down 
through the tremulous water. 

“I think that’s a fire-balloon an’ pretty soon 
’twill all blaze up,” remarked Baby Merry, whose 
short memory still held in grasp the enchanting 
visions that rose from the mainland on the even- 
ing of the Fourth of July. 

‘‘No, dear,” said Dolo; “that’s the moon.” 

Baby Merry did not often contradict Dolo, but 
her determined little soul could not bear to yield 
the point entirely. So she shifted her ground. 

“If I ask God, I guess he’ll turn moony into a 
fire-balloon and let it blaze up for me.” 

“Not — not — not to-night,” said stammering 
Nat, as Dolo was silent; “perhaps some other 
night.” 

The moon, now veiled in a passing cloud, still 


336 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


threw faint rose-lights across the tipper sky, while 
a ruddy lake beneath the dark edges of the drift 
testified to her unseen presence. But when she 
flashed forth again through a high, narrow cleft, 
her color was pure golden. 

“Moony has rubbed her red off goin’ through 
the cloud,” remarked Baby Merry. 

“This here moonshine,” rumbled the gruff 
voice of Cap’n Noll, “puts me in mind of a moon- 
light night out on the Pacific, when my crew muti- 
nied. I had almost all hands Portuguese that 
voyage an’ there was a rascal in the forecastle 
who put em’ up to the notion of stealin’ the ship 
an’ cruisin’ under the black flag. I was settin’ at 
my cabin-table when I heaid a rush o’ feet an’ I 
had hardly time to snatch up a revolver, when I 
found myself facin’ the wolfish eyes of a score of 
murderous villains. My wife an’ my daughter. 
Baby Merry’s mother as was to be, a slim gal o’ 
fifteen, were behind me, an’ except for them I 
stood alone. Do you think I winced ? I never 
stirred an eyelid. I up with my revolver an’ I 
thundered — ‘ The first man as moves from his 
place ’ ” — 

“Gramp, I want to talk,” interruped Baby 
Merry ; “I want to tell a story.” 

“But jest let gramp finish his yarn, chuckie,” 
pleaded the disappointed romancer. 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


337 


“No,” said Baby Merry, with an extra degree 
of decision, born of sleepiness ; “ I like my own 
yarns best. Once Angel corned down from 
Heaven to see Octopus. An’ he said, ‘Now 
mind, you’ve got to be good Octopus to-day’. 
An’ Octopus said, ‘Oh, no, don’t want to be good 
Octopus to-day’. But Angel he frowned an’ said, 
‘I tell you you’ve got to be good Octopus to-day’. 
Then Octopus said, ‘Well, I don’t care. If I 
have to be good Octopus to-day. I’ll be baddest 
Octopus ever was to-morrer’. An’ Angel said, ‘I 
ain’t talkin’ ’bout to-morrer. You be good Octo- 
pus to-day.’ So Octopus had to be good Octopus 
that day, but oh! he was awful bad Octopus 
to-morrer.” 

And at the conclusion of this very characteris- 
tic fable. Baby Merry gave such an unmistakable 
gape that the wily captain was emboldened to 
suggest — 

“ Let’s go up home now an’ look at the Octopus 
in your picter-book.” 

“Yes, want to see Octopus,” replied the child, 
drowsily; “but want to tell Dolo good-night first.” 

So Cap’n Noll deposited his beloved little bur- 
den in Dole’s arms, saying proudly, as he turned 
to Del and the boys — 

“ It really beats me where that child got her 
imagination.” 


338 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


Nat coughed significantly, for which Eric — 
always the captain’s champion — punched him 
with vengeful energy under cover of the shadows, 
while Robert added a kick in the interests of 
good manners. 

Meanwhile Baby Merry was clinging fast to 
Dolo’s*neck. 

“I don’t want you to go away,” the child 
whispered. 

“I must, dear,” replied Dolo, softly; ‘‘but I’ll 
come back again some day.” 

“Some day,” repeated Baby Merry. Then 
with a funny little sigh she thrust Mr. Monk, 
gay red jacket and all, staring button-eyes and 
all, into Dole’s hand. 

“He’s for you,” a choking baby-voice said in 
Dole’s ear, and before the girl could recover her 
self-command, the child had been lifted up in her 
grandfather’s arms and borne away toward home. 

Slipping Mr. Monk under a fold of her skirt, so 
that the mischievous eyes of the boys should not 
detect him, Dolo, with the tenderest tears she 
ever shed knocking at the back of her eyes, 
remembered the treasure-chest. It was no longer 
empty. The Hermit’s tattered wallet, with the 
bow of yellowish ribbon, was in it, and a beautiful 
cabinet photograph of her mother, which one 
evening her father had silently brought and given 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


339 


to her. He had given a duplicate to Del, also, 
but Del had no rusty wallet and no ridiculous Mr. 
Monk — treasures more precious in Dolo’s sight 
than all the maritime spoils which Cap’n Noll had 
so lavishly bestowed upon his Lady Blue-eyes. 

Then the boys and girls, resting on the famil- 
iar beach, as they had rested in a happy group 
so many summer evenings before, watched the 
changing glories of the moonlight and chatted 
quietly, with intervals of silence. 

“Do you know,” asked Robert, suddenly, “what 
a queer thing I stumbled upon under the bluff 
to-day It was a pillow-case, all weather-stained, 
as if it had been out in the storm, and with the 
name Rexford marked on it.” 

“Why, it must be Dole’s,” said Del, in great 
surprise. “When we went to bed that Sunday 
night, her pillow-case was gone and her pillow 
was all bare.” 

“Whew!” whistled Nat; “first time I ever 
heard of a gale strong enough to walk into a room 
and blow a pillow-case off the pillow and out at 
the window, but that storm was a tearer, and no 
mistake.” 

Dolo said nothing. Those keen young eyes of 
hers were dim with age before she ever related to 
human ear the history of that blackest night of 
her childhood. 


340 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


‘'What a dreadful time that was!” said Del, 
with a shudder. “ I believe it was worse for you 
here, than for us there.” 

“You bet,” said Eric, emphatically. “I only 
eat one griddle-cake for breakfast and there was 
maple syrup, too. But Dolo was the worst. She 
acted just like a porcupine, and set up a howl if a 
fellow so much as came near her.” 

“Stick to your natural history, young man,” 
interposed Nat. “The porcupine isn’t a howler. 
His tuneful note, among the birds of the forest, is 
a shrill grunt. Take John Burroughs’ word for it. 
And I know Dolo didn’t do any shrill grunting, 
however bad she felt. Stand up and apologize.” 

“I’ll apologize. I’ll do anything,” said Eric, 
eagerly, “if only Rob will give me his place in the 
boat to-morrow. There’s no sense in lots, Rob, 
and you don’t care about going one quarter as 
much as I do. Come, that’s a good fellow I ” 

“Why should Rob give up his place to you any 
more than to me ? ” demanded Nat. 

“Well, you’re a hedgehog, anyhow, or any kind 
of a pig there is going,” retorted Eric, indignantly. 
“Don’t you skip off to New York for all winter 
and leave Rob and me here to tend farm ? You 
won’t begin to miss the girls as much as we shall. 
Only Rob doesn’t mind — Rob’s such a jolly 
fellow. Say, Rob, can’t I go ? ” 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


341 


'‘No flattery,” said the eldest brother. "Tm 
afraid you’re not strong enough. I don’t want 
father to have much rowing to do.” 

"No,” chimed in Nat; "of course not. And 
Eric’s no good for a long pull.” 

"I am, too,” insisted Eric, with boyish vehe- 
mence. " Do let me go, Rob. Del wants me to. 
I’ll pull as hard as you could, if it makes me lame 
for a week afterward. Say, Rob, don’t be mean.” 

"Well, you can go,” said Robert, and if there 
was disappointment in his heart, there was noth- 
ing but kindliness in his voice. 

Eric uttered a whoop of gratitude and leapt 
upon his brother with a miscellaneous embrace of 
arms and legs. 

Presently Uncle Maurice, with stooping shoul- 
ders and hands clasped behind the back, came 
strolling along the beach and, in response to an 
eager call of welcome, joined the group. For a 
while he seemed disinclined to talk, preferring his 
own reverie as, reclining on the sand, he watched 
the fanciful effects wrought in the fleecy clouds 
by the swift-gliding moon. She cast upon the 
wind-blown drift, as she sped softly on her shining 
way, all exquisite, ethereal tints — amber, silvery, 
violet — the glorified cloud-edges shaping them- 
selves into ever new, fantastic forms, that teased 
and yet bewitched imagination. 


342 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


“Unde Maurice, you will miss the island more 
than any of us,” remarked Dolo, with her old 
abruptness. 

Nat frowned. He was not pleased to have the 
conversation take this turn. In the depths of his 
soul he trembled yet for fear lest his father should 
not have strength to keep the hard-made resolu- 
tion. The boy scraped his foot uneasily across 
the sand and wished once more that Dolo would 
let his father alone. 

“I shall be homesick often and often for my 
dream-haunted solitude,” replied Uncle Maurice, 
sadly. “ I had not thought to forsake it so 
soon as this. My book is not yet written. But 
when the boys are educated, I shall come back. 
The island has never been a place of exile nor 
a prison to me, but a land of dear enchantment. 
Yes; 


“ ‘ The isle is full of noises, 

Sounds and sweet airs, that give delight and hurt not, 
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments 
Will hum about mine ears; and sometimes voices 
That, if I then had wak’d after long sleep, 

Would make me sleep again ; and then, in dreaming, 
The clouds methought would open, and show riches 
Ready to drop upon me.* 


“But not riches of this world’s prizing,” added 
Uncle Maurice, with his gentle smile. The chil- 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


343 


dren felt the smile through his tone. They did 
not need to look at his face. 

“When do you go, Uncle Maurice asked Del, 
stroking the threadbare coatsleeve. 

“I enter upon my duties the first of October,” 
replied Uncle Maurice, with a pathetic touch of 
resignation in the sweet-voiced tones ; “ but we 
shall go on to New York earlier than that — as 
soon as Nick is able to bear the journey. His 
mother is anxious to get him away before the cold 
fall-winds come.” 

“Won’t you miss us a little as well as the 
island.?” asked Del, again. 

“ Miss my school .? Miss my children .? ” queried 
Uncle Maurice; “ah, sorely, sorely! Whenever 
the moon is at the full, as it is to-night, as 
we have so often watched it together, I shall 
wander out and feed my heart with what narrow 
strips of sky the city streets will let me see, 
and I shall think of each of you, dear girls and 
boys, with love and memory and hope and 
prayer.” 

“Will you think of Dolo and me way off in 
Colorado, in our pretty new dresses, among all 
the boarding-school girls.?” asked Del, urging 
down a great lump in her throat. 

“ Maybe those girls won’t like us. Maybe we’ll 
seem queer to them. Maybe our trunk will look 


344 


HERMIT ISLAND. 


small and our new clothes outlandish, after all,” 
suggested Dolo. 

‘‘I will think of you both,” said Uncle Maurice; 
‘‘two brave, faithful little sisters, climbing the 
steep hillside every day — none the worse for a 
tumble now and then — toward the palace of 
truth and love.” 

“You won’t need to think of me, because 
I’ll come out and walk with you,” said Nat, 
sturdily. 

“Think of Rob and me shut in by the icewalls, 
all shining with beautiful colors, like rainbows, 
where the surf freezes before it falls,” put in Eric, 
eagerly. “Oh, Nat, I’m so sorry for you, spend- 
ing the whole winter in a stupid city ! It will be 
pretty tough not to see papa and mamma for so 
long, but I wouldn’t live away from the sea for 
anything. Hear it this minute. How does any 
one ever go to sleep without the sound of the 
surf.?” 

“Think of Eric as eating the Brimblecombs out 
of house and home,” laughed Robert; “you’d 
better pay a double board for that fellow at the 
outset, father, if you want to save a lawsuit in the 
end. And when he isn’t eating, he’ll be setting 
Major on poor old Frisk or swallowing whole 
all Cap’n Noll’s cockolorum yarns.” 

“And how shall I think of my eldest son.?” 


MOONLIGHT ONCE MORE. 


345 


asked Mr. Yorke, with a peculiar tenderness, 
almost reverence, in his tone. 

“Think of him as being the salt of the earth,” 
cried Del, impulsively. 

“Salt of the sea, you’d better say,” corrected 
Nat. 

“ Salt’s a pretty common virtue round here,” 
commented Robert, good-naturedly ; “ but I never 
expect to live up to more than the common 
virtues.” 

“It is late. We must go in,” said Uncle Mau- 
rice, rising. “The moon does her errands, let us 
do ours, if not 


‘With the moon’s beauty and the moon’s soft pace,’ 

yet as fairly and gently as we may. Good- 
night, dear children mine — good-night till next 
summer.” 

“Till next summer,” echoed the girls and boys, 
with husky voices. 

“Till next summer,” repeated the deep tones 
of Mr. Rexford, who had come upon them unno- 
ticed in the dusk and was waiting to take his 
daughters home. 


THE END. 





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